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So with one story accepted by its anthology, another now with the editor who might or might not choose it…two things remain, one of them a story. One is an invitation to write a story for an anthology series where a Paksworld story won’t fit, and the other is the problematic Paksworld story I thought didn’t fit the second anthology invitation. But I’m withholding that for now, because if Editor doesn’t like Story B, maybe he’ll like Story A and I was wrong about it being problematic. It does have way more obviously-fantasy stuff in it. For now, I’m concentrating on the Requiem Mass music (still gluing those hole reinforcers onto the torn pages) and trying to move my brain’s settings from Paksworld to the other anthology’s requirements. So far, the switches on the track junction are being very, very stiff.
This is a lot more short fiction than I usually write in a year, all done in a relatively few months. I will try to keep pushing on it, though, until something comes clear in the book situation. (In background, I’m trying to get the start of something that could be a book or several, and all the starts have gone mushy far too soon to be confident with them. I’m really disappointed in GSgt Tran, who seemed so full of impulsion (in the equestrian sense) but who came to a complete dead stop in the middle of a road with sheep on one side and girls picking berries on the other. No, Tran, I shouted at her. Keep going. What’s over that rise? But there she is, immobile in her vehicle, hands on controls but not moving. I lost the live feed somehow.)
After All Saints, I should be able to scare up a snippet for you, but not today. Today is a fast-moving blur.
Comment by Richard — October 30, 2013 @ 12:17 pm
Slightly befuddled and cannot quite remember all your posts since spring – is story A, the reserve, the one you were working on until last week, or is that story incomplete and A something else written months ago?
Comment by elizabeth — October 30, 2013 @ 12:45 pm
Story A: started right after WorldCon, IIRC, and revised multiple times. I like it, but decided it was too oblique to the anthology’s stated range. Its tentative title is “The Ghost Cavalry of King’s Rest.” In Paksworld history, it’s set far in the past, in Old Aare, south of anything you’ll see in the current books.
The one I sent was indeed started weekend before last (when I just could not get comfortable with Story A, in terms of this market) is Story B.
Comment by Iphinome — October 31, 2013 @ 6:28 am
One remains? Remains…. Must be a zombie story!
Comment by GinnyW — October 31, 2013 @ 1:19 pm
I was looking forward to the ghost cavalry.
Is the berry patch big enough to be hiding something? Like a body? or an Entranceway to the Lost whatever? A lion? A kitten? Do the girls or one girl in particular know some essential bit of information necessary to the unfolding plot? Is their reaction to GSgt Tran the clue to her reception over the hill by whoever is there, for better or worse?
Now I am stuck in the middle of a road (dusty, washed out, baked mud road) with the noon sun beating down and no water in sight) with sheep on the one side and giggling girls (who are all cousins and range from five to thirteen) on the other. Sigh. Its not your fault.
Comment by elizabeth — October 31, 2013 @ 1:44 pm
Alas, the story GSgt Tran is in was going to be SF, not fantasy, and a space-opera-military-SF blend, at that. She was my live feed and she’s just…snapped the cable, I guess. She was in a not-thrilled mood. This is the story that began the night before page one, with an entire merc company losing so much at a gambling palace that their commander had to make a lucrative deal with a media company to get them out of hock. (The setup started long before, of course. The backstory is…intricate.)
The first page is a good, strong, funny-and-intriguing beginning, but…pages down the line, it’s over. I am not thrilled about that and may be able to do a foundation-level rework on it, but not right now.
Comment by Richard — November 1, 2013 @ 3:52 am
Elizabeth, If characters push their way into your head with their stories they want told, then maybe sometimes it works the other way too, and they have been distracted for a time by you in their heads telling Illusion’s story.
Comment by elizabeth — November 1, 2013 @ 10:13 am
Richard: Hmmm…never thought of that. Feedback from writer to characters? Sounds possible. Certainly there have been times when what was happening leaked into the story, and certainly on Tuesday night Illusion was leaking into the story–but that wasn’t its main problem.
The difficulty with this story had been there from its inception, since it wanted to be a novella at least from the first.
Comment by Richard — November 5, 2013 @ 6:06 am
Elizabeth, speaking of eating frogs (as someone was in a recent topic), I really enjoyed your story The Happy Frog. When you have enough Paksworld short stories for their own anthology, it deserves to be included as a bonus.
Comment by elizabeth — November 5, 2013 @ 8:04 am
Richard: I’m delighted that you like “The Happy Frog.” That’s one of the few stories that came to me all at once. “Bargains” was my first fiction sale, when the DEED had already been rejected.
Comment by Richard — November 8, 2013 @ 3:22 pm
Friends, while Elizabeth looks for a new computer here is the rest of my report on PHASES. It has fifteen stories from her first ten years of being published, with an author’s introduction to each (from a short paragraph to over half a page). 15 including Those Who Walk in Darkness which is here on the site, and two far-future SF stories repeated in MOON FLIGHTS. Many of the rest (whether SF, fantasy or straight fiction) are set close to our own time. Always interesting, the stories offer a variety of “flavors and textures”; I happen to remember particularly those lighter in mood.
Thinking about story titles as we were, one of the titles has a double meaning that enhances its story, screams for alertness at one point, but which I got only after mentally translating – this may be one of those subtle trans-Atlantic differences as to turn of phrase.
Bargains, as already mentioned, is short but satisfying. Nominally a Paksworld story, it falls somewhere between the rest (of Paksworld) and the L.A.A.S (which came later) with protagonists we meet nowhere else, and no room to develop any new background.
The Happy Frog is a delight, not specifically Paksworld (not specifically anywhere) but close enough. The frog is the POV.
Comment by elizabeth — November 8, 2013 @ 3:39 pm
I’m keeping an eye on the number of Paksworld stories, published and unpublished, to see when they’ll be enough and when they’ll be out of contract limitations.
If I add the Sergeant Vardan story posted here in segments, I need only a couple more, I think. I should get busy with that.
Comment by Richard — November 8, 2013 @ 4:02 pm
What surprises me now is that Dream’s Quarry didn’t make it into PHASES (unless that was a contract limitation). (As to it not being in MOON FLIGHTS either, you’ve already explained an editorial snit about horses, which was a shame but no need to go into that again.)
Comment by elizabeth — November 8, 2013 @ 4:27 pm
I can’t remember why it didn’t get in…should not have been a contract limitation, since its previous publication was six years earlier. I would have had advice from someone–editor or agent–and maybe that person didn’t want it.
One that will be in a collection someday is “My Princess” (came out too late for PHASES, in WARRIOR PRINCESSES, 1998) though I don’t know if it’s really a Paksworld story. It’s in the mood, though. It might have happened in Old Aare.
Counting the ones listed on the Paksworld website (5), plus the three written recently, plus Vardan’s story and “My Princess,” there are ten…not enough yet, but I hope more will come to me. Old or new; I’ll take either.
Comment by Richard — November 10, 2013 @ 5:29 pm
I still say the Happy Frog is close enough (continuing a lighter vein that Bargains will start), especially if your Princess is in there too. I’d welcome her, sight unseen as the saying goes. So that is eleven possibles.
Yes please to still more stories – or give the pages to the Ghost Cavalry so it can be the novella you say it wants to.
Comment by elizabeth — November 10, 2013 @ 7:43 pm
I expect to have news about another story within a few weeks. What the news is, I’m not able to say, but facts should shake out through the holes.
Comment by SnowGator — November 20, 2013 @ 9:34 pm
Maybe she didn’t snap the cable. There are lots of ways to snap a cable as you know. Rewind the footage and look for IEDs?