Paksworld

At this stage of revision, I always wish I had another two weeks.  Or a month.    There’s always one…more…problem bit to untangle, that I think would benefit from more time to analyze and think about.  And then another, in the next section.  However, things are progressing appropriately.  The holes are filling in,  the once-blurry places are sharpening into focus, and though I’m dealing with some decisions made earlier that I might make differently now, they’re working out with some fierce hammering and welding.   (Clever ideas.  Clever ideas are the ones that seem so shiny! and smart!  at the time, and that flow easily in first draft and then…toward the end…reveal themselves to be more clever than good.  For instance, the…mumble-mumph.  How do you mumble-mumble and mumph-mumph so as to have a crisis *here* that requires characters to appear to have a random emergency giving you-the-writer the opportunity to lay the hook for the string that will later be pulled, so when something (errummph?) is revealed, the reader will feel a connection–yes, there was a foreshadowing but things were so hectic I missed it–and thus the revelation is not a deus ex machina.   Though of course all this backstage work IS the writer being the deus ex machina.)   Read the rest of this entry »

Website host has informed customers that the AC in the server space died, and the backup unit is running, but not a permanent solution.   Also, the HVAC people will need to get into the server space to complete installation of any replacement, which will require turning machines off so they don’t vacuum up the inevitable dust.    When this will happen, we don’t know yet.  (It’s Friday the 13th.   Let’s all perform whatever rituals it takes to make this go smoothly and the HVAC equipment & teams be available, OK?)   I follow the website host on Twitter, where announcements of progress will appear.

But should this and the other sites disappear suddenly, that’s why.  Panic not–We Shall Return.

Confirmation today that the title Cold Welcome has been approved for the new Vatta book.  Hurray! says the writer.

Though of course I want a warm welcome for it when it finally appears.    But it’s certainly not the kind of reception Ky Vatta expected on her first return to Slotter Key since she left as a disgraced former cadet captaining an old, inefficient, cargo ship slated for destruction at the end of the voyage.

Revision continues on the manuscript, with one bleary eye on the calendar.

Yes, those are roofers tearing off shingles at the house my mother owned when she died.  Our son lived there awhile and stays there on weekends, as do guests.  It’s where we have parties, too, as it has  more room than our house.   It will soon have a metal roof, which should last longer, given that we have hail storms and branches that fall on the roof and squirrels who think getting through roofs is a lot of fun.

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You will be as disappointed as I am that just putting very interesting and amazing stuff in the surroundings of a story doesn’t always persuade characters to take advantage.  Things you will not be seeing in the book, despite my earnest endeavors and a lot of research and backstory work:  a mammoth hunt, harnessing caribou/reindeer for transportation of anything,  Irish elk shaking those tremendous antlers, or the terrifying attack of a pack of dire wolves.

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As I told you awhile back, I met a talented artist at KeyCon (Winnipeg) back in May of this year and commissioned her to do a portrait of Admiral Kylara Evangeline Dominique Vatta, or Ky as most of us know her.   I think she did a great job.  It took awhile, because she had to finish the school year (she teaches in a high school) and then had something else to finish, and various other things happened, but here it is.

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The local PBS station carries as their secondary station something called worldchannel.org, and it had an interview with Eric Schmidt of Google; I saw the last part of it.   Right toward the end, he started bragging on how wonderful Google Books Project was, and how they’d been “litigated to death” (not with their money they weren’t) and how that settlement had been overturned (no doubt with the application of money) and they’d get it all done in time and it was a great service to society.
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So…when did I forget about active verbs, huh?  Not completely forget but forget enough to find myself in a thicket of “was carried, was done, was this and was that.”   Oh, and pluperfect constructions where they weren’t needed.    Also temporal glitches.   It helps to keep things in order, except when you intend to have them scrambled, right?  Right.  FIRST they did this, then because that happened they did this other thing, the results of which caused yet another action.

This doesn’t mean I’m down to the fine-combing, really, it’s just that some things stick out and I deal with them then, even if it’s not strictly by my protocol.

Puzzles, first.  I never heard from Dragon*Con or whoever (if anyone) won my auction donations about the auction winners.   I was findable (at autograph session and panels) the day after the auction, and expected someone to walk up and show me the certificate and then I’d know who.   Didn’t happen.  The elevator crush was so bad on Monday, when I was leaving, that I did not have time to go over to con ops and ask them…I thought there’d be an email when I got home, but there wasn’t.   Did no one bid on the Tuckerizations?  Did my contribution somehow get lost in the pile of things in the boxes where guests were supposed to put them when checking in?   No clue.  No clue whom to contact.   If I had not come down with a juicy and miserable cold earlier this week, I might have been able to look back through my emails for a contact person, but I can’t sit up and stare at the computer screen that long–vision’s fuzzy too.

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I’m offering two Tuckerizations at the Dragon*Con Charity Auction, since I don’t have a new book out this year.

One is a character placement in one (probably the one I’m just finishing) of the two Vatta related books on contract.  The other is a character placement in a Paksworld story, one that will either come out in an anthology or be published in another collection  of Paksworld fiction.   If there’s room in my suitcase, I might tuck in a couple of audiobooks as well, but no promises on that.   The Vatta story character will necessarily be a minor character in the book; the Paksworld story character may be more central (depends on the story.)