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One of the frustrating things to all of us (except those who really REALLY don’t want to know more than is in the books as they come out) is that even when I know something, I may not be able to talk about it. I know that, because I get questions here, and in email, about things I just can’t talk about. So here’s a quick and dirty guide to what sorts of questions I’m likely to be able to answer (or not.) It’s quick and dirty and won’t cover everything but it may cover some things you’ve wondered about.
General background and cultural things which are on the Paksworld website: I can talk about those, though I’d appreciate it if you’d look there first. Events in the background that will stay in the background, legends and myths underlying the story-world…those I can talk about. I can talk about animals that have already appeared in the books, or places, and (sometimes) the backstory of characters. I can talk about motivation (the power source of story) in books that are already published.
What I can’t talk about are things like “Will we see X do Y?” well…that’s part of a future story, and as such should not be revealed until the right time, which is in the book it’s in. (If the book is still being written, then I may not know…so it’s “Maybe…” Which is not being coy, but just flat not knowing.) So nothing about what a character will do, or may end up, or might become, or what will happen. I know some…I don’t know some…and telling you any would a) be spoilers and b) would unbalance your reading of the book when it’s done. Because you can’t help building story on your own, while waiting for a book to come out, and the more you know, the more committed you become to your story–and the less free you are to read the story that’s written.
This is because good readers are in partnership with writers–are part of the creative process by putting in their unique imaginative reading of the cues the writer puts down. So no two of you, told that Paks is tall, yellow-haired, gray eyed, strong…will see in your mind the same face, the same body. You would, I hope, not gift her with curly red hair, but if you did, I couldn’t stop you. The same is true of every other detail. For some of you, as you read, “sib” is a coffee-like drink; for others it’s an herbal drink; for others it’s whatever suits their fancy.
“Things” are trivial in this game, but feelings, motivations, relationships–these are the real powder-kegs when it comes to blending the writer’s story with the reader’s reading….and it only works (in my opinion) when the reader has all the clues to work from. Given a situation, and an interesting character, you will naturally take off on your own speculations…and if you’re wrong (wrong being defined as “you took the middle fork; I took the left one” not as “absolutely wrong/stupid/bad) then when you read the book you’ll have a little more trouble seeing why I took the left one. You will not see some of the cues.
So I hope this helps a bit. Lots of the background material is on the website; some isn’t, and feel free to ask even if it is over there. Background, backstory, craft stuff…but not the stuff in the next book or the next.
Oh, and for anyone who hasn’t yet noticed, The Hobbit filming has started and there’s a sort of introductory video up at TheOneRing.net. I watched it today. There was squeeing and OMG-yes-ing and want-it-NOW-ing from this fangirl.
Comment by Keenan — April 14, 2011 @ 10:04 pm
Based on the rules stated above, I think I can assume the following a safe subject…
One of the things that I have not seen on the website at all is any sort of reference to how a lot of the names of places and people are pronounced. I’m probably a little more OCD than most and it has me in a bit of a mood of sorts.
Having an uncommon name means that there are going to be plenty of people who just can’t seem to get it right, and that leaves me with a sensitivity to how names are supposed to sound. Some are intuitive, others not so much. If these names are supposed to be left up to reader interpretation, then I guess that’s just something I need to get over, but having a guide to pronunciation would be great.
My official question is are the names left for us readers to decide how they get pronounced or is there an Official E. Moon pronunciation guide?
Comment by Eliz. D. — April 14, 2011 @ 11:11 pm
The visuals are funny: my daughter looks exactly like Paks in my mind: She’s only 5′ 8″, but walks tall, is strong, has long blonde hair, large hazel eyes, and can be moody. She looks a little different than the covers on the first series of books though.
Dorrin, to me, looks exactly like the cover of the first volume of this series. I couldn’t believe it!
Kieri, on the other hand, does not look like the current cover in my mind. I see him with a face that could be a cousin of Dorrin’s, but with much darker red hair.
I do not think that anybody’s vision of a story is exactly alike, but I think that an author’s vision is the best guide if other spin-off creations such as artwork or movies are done. My vision of Tolkien’s universe is very different from Peter Jackson’s, for example, because Jackson did not follow the order or character development of the books; and the order made a difference in motivations. Sometimes, motivations and actions determine looks: as fighters will have strong, scarred hands; and then the looks and personalities of the people will be easier to imagine.
One of the joys of your series is that it is also enjoyable to re-read and imagine the people and places. When they do have motivations and morals (good, bad, or complex), it is fun to go back and see the interplay between them, sometimes even more fun, seeing the clues revealed. I love plot twists, but by themselves… well, (ahem) a certain other fantasy author puts tons of cliff-hangers in, but on a re-read, plot twists and all, there isn’t enough motivation to hold my attention, because when the plot is “spoiled” for me, there is nothing else.
I intend to browse more in your website as I have the time; my only beef with your publisher is that they don’t include all the maps. I do not want to imagine there; I want to see it. Let’s see if we can convince them to publicize, and these books become run-away bestsellers so that somebody will publish a book full of detailed maps.
Comment by elizabeth — April 15, 2011 @ 5:21 am
It’s not even 6 am yet and I’m about to run off to play Author at the Texas Library Association’s annual meeting, so this will have to be brief (Houseguest is meeting me there and we’ll be busy with each other and a leg of lamb we’re going to stuff, after that.)
Pronunciation guide…I guess I’ll have to give up and do that (when I can…) The reason there’s never been one is that as a reader, I don’t like them, and thought more readers were like me. Also I thought I was making up names that were easy to pronounce. Not so, obviously. It will go on the list. Meanwhile, if you “hear” a name differently than the list later makes out…don’t worry about it. If you can “not worry about it.”
I agree that the first book “got” Dorrin exactly on the cover (though younger than she looks now, by a few years.) And the second–no, that’s not Kieri to me (there’s no beard, for one thing.) The US cover art for the third book–which I’ve now seen but can’t yet show–is completely different from both of those in design. But then cover art is notoriously unreliable as a guide to characters (none of my dark-skinned protagonists ever showed up with dark skin, though the hair color was usually OK.)
As with pronunciation, readers vary a lot in their tolerance for description (including character description.) On the writer blogs I follow, fans of those writers comment on things like that, and it seems like a pretty clean split between telling almost nothing and telling all.
Maps: maps are expensive to print, and in the case of this series, not all the maps have been drawn yet. (Remember, I’m doing both books and maps–I want to control the maps too, control freak that I am, so that means drawing them myself. Which takes time.) By the end of these books, there will be maps of all the relevant lands. I don’t think the next book will have one (because the map for Kings covers it) but after that, the deluge (the map will include the Immerhoft Sea.) My ultimate mapping goal is to have the whole thing (the story area, not the whole world) on a poster. In color. With little drawings on it. Wish me a steady hand, please.
And now it’s after 6:15 and I must get out of here and on the road.
Comment by leo — April 15, 2011 @ 9:59 am
OK so its not just me. I always thought I remembered reading kieri having a beard but with no beard on the cover was very disconcerting. Which brings up a question. Do Elves grow facial hair in this world system? And the pointed ears. Are they variable in size and length? Are they more vertical or horizontal? Do they have lobes? Earrings? And multiple including nose chains etc? There are lots of discussions and interpretations out there as many have different ideas of what an “ELF” is and particularly their loks and appearence.
Comment by leo — April 15, 2011 @ 10:01 am
Oh and Tattoo’s. Do the elves or dwarves or gnomes or any of the particular cultures use tattoos? Ceremonial maybe like Henna or permanent like celtic?
Comment by Eliz. D. — April 15, 2011 @ 10:35 am
Thank you; when you do finish everything, I’ll order that world map. I tend to forget which way from some towns to each other. Thank you for putting the maps up on the blog; they would be nice on the FAQ page. I love your drawing.
I live in a city that seems flat, but there are a deep ravines in the middle and an old canal system, which now is only a system of parks, so the roads do not always make sense on a map. Locals say that we have four seasons here: Almost Winter, Winter, Still Winter, and Construction. We are now about to begin the season of Construction, and often on every main parallel road that goes around the ravines, so it is a headache to figure out the back street detours. This adds to the higher prices of travel. I would think that our modern world would figure out a substance for the roads that does not fall apart every winter. I also think that when maps are printed, they should show the old fashioned altitude rings, so that major hills are noticeable, or else some other system of explaining some of the dimensional pitfalls of the roads. Even a little drawing of the hills; your maps are very self-explanatory.
Comment by Linda — April 15, 2011 @ 6:09 pm
It strikes me as amusing or maybe weird that authors (like you) will avoid giving descriptions of how a character looks … or may give quite detailed descriptions … and then the designer/publisher/editor (somebody) calls for a cover with an image which may or may not look like the person described by the author … and the author is given no say in it. It’s all marketing!
There are times I want to tear off the cover and cram it down the throat(s) of the idiot(s) who didn’t bother to read the book. Historic characters with modern hair and makeup are a particular dislike of mine. I think one of things I like about the Dick Francis books is that they have classy covers without ever showing the characters.
I too look forward to your poster/map with drawings … although it sounds as thought there’s some writing to be done first.
Comment by elizabeth — April 15, 2011 @ 10:05 pm
Linda, there’s definitely writing to be done first.
Comment by elizabeth — April 15, 2011 @ 10:16 pm
Some humans use tattoos, but in “civilized” lands they’re associated most with criminals (the Thieves’ Guild uses a thumb-web tattoo; Liartians use other specific tattoos…the location and design are both meaningful.) Horse nomads use tattoos (but not all clans of them…it’s a clan thing.) Some Dzordanyan longhouses use simple (not very obvious) tattoos.
Elves never have tattoos; gnomes don’t either, but sometimes individual dwarves decide to buck dwarf fashion and get one.
Comment by elizabeth — April 15, 2011 @ 10:18 pm
leo: Elves don’t grow facial hair and do not have pointed ears. Elves may wear earrings (some do, some don’t, and if there’s a reason for that, I haven’t learned it yet.) They do not have multiple piercings.
Comment by Kip Colegrove — April 16, 2011 @ 6:16 am
In re pronunciation guides: I’ve always enjoyed working the pronunciation of character and place names and other terminology out on my own, especially when they’re designed to be reasonably transparent, at least to folks acquainted with widespread spelling conventions based on the Latin alphabet. The historical and comparative linguist in me can certainly enjoy the high level of language creation so characteristic of Tolkien, but that is a specialist’s interest.
I think, Elizabeth, that you’d enjoy the way I pronounce personal names and toponyms from Paksworld, but I don’t claim it would be the same way you do it…except that in an interview you pronounced Aarenis the way I do, which means, to my mind, that you’ve given sufficient clues to the observant.
Comment by Chris Hero — April 16, 2011 @ 8:39 pm
Can you discuss the pantheon of gods and saints in Paksworld?
Who is Tir? You’ve named three bad guys, who are the others?
Are any of the gods paksworld people invoke in conversation “mythological”?
Comment by elizabeth — April 16, 2011 @ 9:41 pm
Take a look at the Religion page on the Paksworld website.
Comment by Chris Hero — April 17, 2011 @ 10:29 am
Thank you>
Comment by Duncan — April 18, 2011 @ 10:19 am
What I would appreciate is a *really* hi-res copy of the mastermap-photo.jpg you posted a while back, which should be simple, so I can print it large, and annotate it with What Was Known Before (and other things that strike my fancy). Is that possible, and permitted? (I promise not to complain, if you re-draw whole sections later, to fit a new storyline.)
Comment by Anna Puma — April 18, 2011 @ 4:21 pm
re: Pronunciation. I get the feeling we could be going down a thorny path. Remember the Pargunese accent mentioned several times? Plus the langauges of elves, dwarves, and gnomes. And Paks’ name is not even of human origin. People who really know Kieri and Paks will say their names in a consistent way, others probably not. Will wait and see.
Comment by Keenan — April 18, 2011 @ 9:31 pm
I’m now seeing this pronunciation thing for the can of worms that it is. I’m also wondering if I’m in the minority on this one, too.
Comment by Adam M. — April 19, 2011 @ 8:56 am
One thing I would like to see is a timeline from Paksworld. Either a rough outline or a detailed one. When did Paks join Phelan’s company? When did Kieri get taken as a child? How long ago did Gird actually live? When did the Magelords come over the pass and take over in the north? Just a few questions that run through my head that could be answered by a brief historical timeline.
Comment by elizabeth — April 19, 2011 @ 9:15 am
Duncan. No, there will not be a high-res master map available until a) the master map is finished, and b) it’s available as a poster. There are both legal and practical reasons why not (like, not enough time to finish the map right now.)
Comment by elizabeth — April 19, 2011 @ 9:16 am
I wouldn’t dare try to create the accents…that’s something for actors to play with. The most I could do is give a “central” pronunciation for the names. And on this, too, I have to plead the lack of time right now.
Comment by elizabeth — April 19, 2011 @ 9:19 am
You may be in the minority, Keenan, but minorities have needs too. I did not understand at first (certainly not when writing the DEED) how much many readers need to “hear” the names as soon as they see them…or have a pronunciation guide. And how many readers “hear” the same letter combinations differently. It might help if we all knew and could use the International Phonetic Alphabet, but we don’t (I don’t–my choir director kept trying to give us a short course in it when we were trying to learn German pronunciation to sing Bach’s St. John Passion.) So when I have time, I will try to come up with something useful for those who need it, without getting into all the variations, accents, etc.
Comment by elizabeth — April 19, 2011 @ 11:09 am
The detailed timelines I had 20+ years ago while writing the Deed and then the Gird & Luap books were in the notebooks that have disappeared. And I don’t remember all the fine details (because I was depending on having the notebooks.)
Also, the characters in the story do not experience time and space as we do (other cultures on this planet did not experience them as we do.) Markers important to the characters (and thus to the story) are in the text. People do not care much about exact birthdates (unless they fall on a great festival) or exact ages: there are no identity documents. There is no universal calendar. What matters is the recurrent time–the four great astronomical festivals and the days to or after them. That’s why there are no calendar references other than those, and why people count time in sun-hands (holding the hand up and counting how many palm-widths from the sun to the horizon) or lady-glasses (sand-glasses.) it would not be appropriate to use modern precision.
Paks is over eighteen winters (how age is measured by the Duke’s Company) when she joins the Company as a recruit…that’s in the text, when she first talks to Stammel in the recruiting booth. She knew from her cousin she had to be eighteen winters–that’s all she really cares about. You can easily count up how old she is “now” but that’s not important to her or anyone else. What’s important are the experiences she’s had and what she is now. Her recruit training takes the rest of that summer, fall, winter, and she goes down to Aarenis the next spring…she’s nineteen winters. She has three campaign years with the Company (making her 20 in the second campaign year, 21 in the third), leaves it in late summer, is in Fin Panir before Midwinter Feast, at which point she becomes a paladin-candidate. She’s now 24 winters old–but I doubt she’s aware of it. It’s just not that important.
Kieri was abducted at age 4 (that’s in the text) and escapes at age 12 (also in the text), looking younger because he’s been stunted in growth. At the end of Oath of Gold he’s about fifty (he did not know exactly how old he was, of course, but that’s also in the text.) Oath of Fealty and Kings of the North both take place in the first year of his reign. So he was abducted about 46 years before the present story, give or take a year. Once he’s back in Lyonya, it’s possible for him to find out exactly how old he is now, from court records of his birth and abduction…but unless that’s a big difference from his real age, he will continue to feel that this year, right now, he’s about 50 and about to be about 51.
There are other clues to duration as it impacts characters in the texts themselves. Gird is hundreds (not thousands) of years back…by the evidence of the Fellowship of Gird (its changes from what he set up, etc.) probably 500-700 years back. The magelords obviously came over the pass well before that, as they had time to build up their own elaborate northern social structure that then began to change…but not so long before that there were not some very potent memories still extant, and they still felt insecure. So…probably not more than a few hundred years.
Comment by Keenan — April 19, 2011 @ 7:49 pm
I’m glad the timeline stuff was cleared up some. I’m also glad to see that my estimates of about 700-800 years between Gird and Paks wasn’t too far off. Information moves so quickly in our time that we need accurate references for so many things, but I can see why there wouldn’t be much need for these references when information traveled very slow in comparison. I just wonder how they could keep track of the exact day the eveners fell on with no calendar or other such long term references. Estimating the date by the length of daylight can’t be easy.
This got me to thinking about how they artisans and craftsmen went about doing things with the limited technology they had got. I wonder what sort of inventions these people were coming up with, in comparison to our own ancient history, that didn’t involve magic. You can clearly see that they were able to capture water power to perform grain grinding or similar tasks and the siege engines and catapults were significant technologically. The ability to manipulate metal in to useful tools, weapons, or decoration is significant as well. This assumes that they created these objects more out of need than just for the sake of pure creativity in most respects. I can’t help but wonder about the possibility of the very innovative and brilliant minds bringing amazing devices to fruition. The closest reference I can possibly think of, though, is Arranha. He questioned the nature of everything and might have been one of the greatest philosophical minds of his time. Not many had the time to invest in such activities and it’s quite a shame that he didn’t write down anything on these topics. It may have made a great impact on those scholars that came after him.
On a side note, I also noticed after rereading Legacy of Gird that there was a change of command in the Elven home that was never really mentioned. During Gird’s time there is a King of the Lord’s Forest and during Paks time there is the Lady of the Lady’s Forest. I can see that, until recent events in Lyonya, there wasn’t any storyline directly involving the Elven home at all. I just found it interesting was all.
Comment by elizabeth — April 19, 2011 @ 10:21 pm
Keenan: Both religious beliefs and the different kinds of magic have affected the course of technology as we know it. On your side note…I know I covered this in a response to someone within the past few weeks, but: there was no change of command…there is (in the current book’s time) and was ( in the past) more than one elvenhome. The Kingsforest is in the far west; the Ladysforest in Lyonya, and there were, at one time, other elvenhomes, each with its own ruler.
Comment by Chae — May 18, 2011 @ 12:24 pm
I found it very interesting that the medical arts are much more advanced in the Paksworld than the equivalent feudal/middle ages time here on earth. I’d imagine that’s due to prohibitively high cost of magical healing. Deeds book mentioned the healing potion the Duke used on Paks probably ate up all the profit he was hoping to make, and people (both injured and healers) demonstrate some forbearance in using healing unless sorely required. Priestly healers view it as their god’s favor and not to be used gratuitously or to ease mere discomfort for wounds that would eventually heal by themselves. That probably drove advances in medical fields despite presence of magical healing. The surgeons are apparently aware that microorganisms cause infection and if you recall, that really was the A-ha! moment that led to rapid advances here on earth.