Paksworld

It looks like Limits of Power will be a summer book, not a spring book, next year.   My new editor took on the heroic task of reading the entire Paksworld corpus before leaping into the new book–and I was delighted that she did so.   But that was eight previous books–none of them skinny–and she had other duties besides working on my book; she wants to do one more read of that before giving me her revision requests, which I won’t get until the end of the month.     So instead of trying to rush the production schedule, which is a good way to introduce accidental errors,  the planned release date has been pushed back.     It’s not set in stone yet, but it’s “fairly firm” for June.

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So there I’ve been, chugging away (some days better, some not) on Book V, and also trying to read outside that box a little because of the BBC panel discussion coming up, and suddenly…I’m on the phone to the lovely folks in London (who have been uniformly encouraging and lovely)  to talk about the upcoming program.   My day-writing in fantasy has been separated from my night-reading in SF by other things, some of them LifeStuff (like knitting while waiting at the hospital for my husband to be done with a test procedure…even a slow knitter like me can accomplish a fair bit of 2×2 ribbing in 3 hours!), and thus I’ve been able to cope with the difference in cognitive function each requires.

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A productive day is a day on which at least 2000 words pile up.    I’ve been dealing with 1000 word days, 850 word days, 1600 word days, even 1854 word days…but the clear-sailing ahead 2000 word days have been thin on the calendar.   Today was one of them, plus some.

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You won’t see this for a long time, but I can’t resist:

As he lay wondering about this, a sound moved in the darkness, a sound for which–like everything else–he had no name.

And no, I’m not saying who “he” is or what’s going on.  There’s a book and a large chunk between now and then.

Nor is this a good topic for open speculation.    You might accidentally hit on details that would spoiler it for many.

Clearly I haven’t been clear enough about the geography.   Here’s some help.

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First, the excitement:   my UK publisher’s publicity person emailed to tell me that BBC-Radio wanted to contact me, inviting me to participate in a discussion of future war.   Now I’ve done future war panels at SF conventions (the funniest, to me, was the one where I arrived just in time, in costume from having done a SFWA Muskteers  fencing demo, and turned out to be the only woman and only veteran on the panel. )   But this is different because the other panelists are not other SF writers or SF fans…but people in entirely different disciplines.    Early in the morning (my time)  on May 16 I will go to the assigned studio in Austin and all those lovely electronic connections will be made–and the other panelists and I and the moderator will dig into the topic, each in our own way.

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I’ve been working on the second plot-bomb section, very slowly until today because it had gone cold.  Today it warmed up and got all hot and bubbly and crispy at the edges.    And threw new surprises at me.   That was who?   Why did that other have a long split in the boot upper but no injury under it?   Why did the who that was do what he did?  Why did the other….?  Etc.

Over 2000 words today.    I ate too  much supper too late after that.  Read the rest of this entry »

Tuesday and Wednesday were both 2000+ word days, and though today is moving much slower (there was writing-related business to do this morning, which also involved a trip to town to the post office),  Book V seems to be over its “You ignored me–I’ll ignore you” snit.    I’ve written out almost all of one of early-Tuesday-morning’s plot-bombs, and have the other still to do (notes made at the time, of course.)    I think it’s not quite as “big” in terms of wordage, but that doesn’t matter.  It’s an important chunk of plot, to be sure.

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I woke up with a headache, and lay there thinking “Not a migraine today, PLEASE.”    But apparently, the headache was a plot bomb about to burst in my skull.  Two, in fact, one each for the viewpoint characters involved.     As you have heard before, I enjoy plot bombs (words flow out with less effort and at least 80% of them are going to stay.)    But I see no reason why these plot bombs had to wake me up after only three hours sleep, instead of letting me rest until daylight and dropping their contributions down my turret hatch then.

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Book IV now has a title:  Limits of Power.    That’s the US title; I’m hoping that my UK Editor will go with that as well, since books with different titles in the two markets cause problems…no matter how often I say that N1 is the same book as N2, someone will buy the other one thinking they’re getting a different book and then be angry.

In other news, there’s some disturbing stuff going on that we’re not ready to talk about, but which will result in gaps in posting.   Sometimes life just sucks in various ways, several of them simultaneous.