Paksworld

I haven’t talked about actually writing book three lately, what with so much else going on–sometimes answering comments used up my available time.  But work is progressing, just slowly.  I hope to speed up. 

I’m writing on three prongs, from three different POVs at the moment.  Arvid, everyone’s favorite “I’m-not-a-thief…” character is in a very dangerous situation because he failed to anticipate treachery from a certain quarter.   But this is Arvid, and though he’s not a Girdish yeoman,  he once saved a Girdish paladin’s life.  Gnomes aren’t the only ones who pay their debts.  Or impose them.

Linnar Vardan, a Halveric sergeant, goes from freezing in a cold ditch full of water to…well…it’s still up in the air whether she survives the book or not.   She’s an interesting case, as she used to be a male sergeant named Egram.  I didn’t like Egram’s name and was searching for another, when a friend in choir, a master-sergeant in the National Guard with many years of service (including in Iraq)  told me about her upcoming retirement.   She and her husband (retired Army) are both the right character and bone structure to be in a fantasy, so I asked if she’d like to be a character as a “Thank you for your service” retirement present.   She said yes; I reworked the name to something distantly related to hers,  and sent her the chapters.   Didn’t change anything but the name and pronouns; when she read it she said “That’s me–how did you do that?”

She’s a master-sergeant with over thirty years of service.  They tend to share certain common characteristics, and I knew some really good ones.

Then there’s Arcolin, who’s having his own difficulties with some displaced persons and a dragon.

Enough chips of colored stone and you have a mosaic picture.  So bit by bit, though not my favorite way to first-draft, does work.  (In the years when our son was small and I was home-schooling him, I had to learn to write bit by bit…a book a year that way.)