Paksworld

This post would have gone up last week, except for a power outage, a stubborn computer, and two speaking gigs for which prep had to be done.

Yes!  The cover of Shattered Shields in which I have a story, “First Blood.”  Those of  you who haunt Amazon.com have already seen it, no doubt, but last week was my first sight of it, when the editor sent it out to all of us.   Read the rest of this entry »

Rancherfriend-E, recruited as my editorial assistant on this project,  took far less time than I would have to act like a Sorting Hat and divvy up the stories-so-far between the two proposed collections.   I made one change about the time she was emailing me “You could do this instead…” and her this and my that were the same.   Then I threw a couple of other things into the first group (partly because I wanted to and partly because it would even up the wordage between the two) and she said “Good idea.  I think I’ll take a nap now.” Read the rest of this entry »

So it’s more than time for another snippet from Crown of Renewal,  which means you get…more than one snippet.    Remember that snippets may have redactions–a word or several–to prevent spoilering.   If long, there’ll be an ellipsis marking the gap, but if it’s just one word…well, you knew the writer was sneaky.  Here we go: Read the rest of this entry »

No one here has made this mistake.  However, in the greater blogosphere, I see this kind of thing coming and going, and as far as this blog is concerned, I want it to go and stay away.

“What?  What’s wrong?” I hear you say.   Read the rest of this entry »

…that last week’s “phone call every parent dreads”  ended well, with our autistic son alive, unhurt,  and not detained by police.  That’s very good news, and I have nothing but praise for the police & EMS handling of the situation–and this in a police force I have criticized before.   It helps, of course, that our son is white, good-looking, and that all the long hours of coaching and practice on polite behavior meant he was polite and friendly to the police officers.    All of those contributed to the way the police handled the situation.  However, the situation and its aftermath pretty much ate our days from last Thursday at 6 pm when we got the first call through Monday’s last contact with the crisis management team.  Read the rest of this entry »

Short fiction continues to flow…it’s odd, this happened after I finished the Deed–the first really solid short stories I’d ever been able to write and finish.  Only one of them sold–“Bargains”–and the agent I got later said the others weren’t that good (since none of them had sold in the several years before he took me on, he was probably right.)    But finishing the trilogy led to an outburst of short stuff.  And now that’s happening again.  (Only now, I think,  I write better short stuff.) Read the rest of this entry »

Because it’s the week of my birthday, you get a snippet.    One with some judicious excisions, alas, because  Crown is so very full of spoilers this close to the end of the whole story arc.   It’s still supposed to raise more questions than it answers.
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Many forms of government have existed, and now exist, in our world…many forms of government can be depicted in fiction (including ones we haven’t yet seen in reality, like, um, a completely fair one.)   Epic fantasy is frequently criticized for having monarchies and aristocracies  (and the writers thereof accused of romanticism about the Middle Ages.)    So a reasonable question is “Why are the political systems in Paksworld what they are?”

And the answer is, “I studied history at Rice under F.S. Lear and K.F. Drew and C. Garside.  That explains everything.”   And I see a row of stubbornly frowning faces in front of me, with thought balloons over their heads saying “That explains NOTHING.”  And I’ll bet the stubborn faces would still have those thought balloons if I added, “OK, there was also prehistory and cultural anthropology…” Read the rest of this entry »

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 »