Paksworld

As this is March 1, in 15 days Oath of Fealty will hit the streets in the US.    If any of you are near Austin, Texas,  I’m doing a book signing on Tuesday, March 16, at Book People (6th and Lamar) at 7 pm.   Earlier (4 – 5 pm CST) I’ll be doing an online chat at Suvudu with John Hemry (writing as Jack Campbell, author of the Lost Fleet series) and editor Betsy Mitchell, who will try to keep John and me from taking off into the wild blue.

This is not to ignore the UK launch and the reports from some of you that the Orbit edition is falling into eager hands and showing up on store shelves–but since I’ll be signing the US edition in fifteen days, I’m naturally focused on that one.   Among the things I love about the new book in its “produced” form, I love how the map looks.   I drew it, but the labels are in the font the publisher chose (not one I have on my machine–I really like it!)

Meanwhile, I’ve realized that yes, I must go all the way back to the beginning with Sergeant Linnar Vardan and her little group of survivors trying to hold off the invasion…and that means I also have to think hard about whether anyone in that group has horse-nomad ancestry.  Because if the invaders are hacking up their dead horses…will someone think this is blasphemy?   Or just a sign of how desperate they are?

There’s a touch of Napoleon in Russia going on here (it’s winter, tired and hungry troops are slogging along through rotten weather with insufficient supplies) but the scale is much, much smaller.    I wonder if Russia was at all a land of mystery and myth to the French troops?