Paksworld

The historians and archaeologists among you know that plumbing–its existence, variations, quality, and effect on human health (both good and bad)–is highly variable throughout history.    Elaborate systems for providing fresh drinking water, for instance, existed in time (and within a short distance) alongside the simplest, least effective ways of getting water to drink and a place to put your waste.   This allows fantasy and science fiction writers to play with the co-existence of different kinds of plumbing, and different attitudes towards what we now call public health issues.

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There are still bits of good writing news I can’t talk about yet, and thus am required to look carefully blank about when asked.  But I can say that besides dealing with many other things yesterday, a Paksworld story sold to an anthology showed up with Editor’s marks and comments and would I please get it back to Editor by the 28th.  It went back last night.   Editor did a good job of pointing out some things to fix, one of which I really wish hadn’t been necessary to fix, but…Editor had a point.  Read the rest of this entry »

The Herdwick yarn I bought is exactly what I hoped for–a yarn that belongs in a fantasy novel, in that its feel (like the breed itself) is old, traditional, and suits a rugged pre-industrial setting.    Here’s a small swatch knitted on US #5, (3.75mm) needles, from the Aran-weight, light-colored yarn.   I’m getting five stitches per inch.

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January is the month in which I have to turn in the annual report on our wildlife management program.   Some years I get it almost done in December.  This year I didn’t,  so I’m working on it now.  Also on another official report.   Husband does the last quarterly tax stuff, but I’m supposed to gather paperwork (whimper) and hand it to him.  Hence, bustling through. Read the rest of this entry »

Shattered Shields edited by Jennifer Brozek and Bryan Thomas Schmidt will be released November 4, 2014 to bookstores everywhere by Baen in trade paperback. Read the rest of this entry »

First careful run through the page proofs  for Crown of Renewal is done, finding only three errors–the usual clean job that Del Rey’s production team delivers.  Now for the backwards pass, because I have (though not with Del Rey) found truly awful problems only on the second, backward, pass, when I’m forced to see the page differently and cannot be distracted by the story. Read the rest of this entry »

What makes writers laugh?  What makes writers laugh at themselves?   Things like this:

http://maggie-stiefvater.tumblr.com/post/68515543753/novelist-error-messages

I’ve now looked up Maggie Stiefvater and read a teaser from two of her books, and I think I’m going to have to read one of hers end to end.  In fact, I know I am.  Because writing like that in the teaser, plus sense of humor?  Priceless.

(No, it’s not off-topic: it’s about writing novels…)

Like most writers, I have a head full of unwritten stories–only they aren’t nicely complete, something I could, with time, simply write down.   They’re like the old men who, when we moved here, used to sit on benches in front of the domino hall (no longer there) and grocery store (still there, and now including what was the domino hall, but the wide covered sidewalk is now cluttered with the ice machine, the propane tank locker, a newspaper stand, and signs, so it’s hard to even walk under cover let alone slouch on a bench and talk, as the old men used to do.

At any rate, every one of those old men had stories to tell, but they were shy of the newcomer woman who slowed down on her way in and out of the grocery store, hoping to overhear more.   A few of them (Doss and Wallace, particularly) finally relaxed enough to share some, but nowhere near all, their stories.    The characters in my head with unwritten stories have stories…everyone does…but they aren’t telling them yet, or not in enough detail that I can be sure it’s really a story and not an anecdote they want to share.  Read the rest of this entry »

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.  Read the rest of this entry »

I am still not happy with the Paksworld story written for the second anthology (and the deadline daily steps closer to my nose) so I started another one.   Actually I’ve started several that didn’t work at all, either because they instantly bulged and made it clear they would be too long,  or because fitting them to the anthology requirements would warp them too badly.   But this new one has retained its potential and is cantering along briskly.  It’s too long, but that’s because I had to work out background in the course of writing it–cuts shouldn’t be too difficult.  I hope. Read the rest of this entry »