Paksworld

Since there’s interest, here’s another post on writing stories.    One perennial question (less here than elsewhere) is “Which came first, plot or character?”  It also emerges as “Is this plot-driven or character-driven?”  Another variation is “Do you get the idea first, or a character?”    In other words, “We know you can’t get a chicken from an omelet, but did this omelet start with the egg or the chicken that laid it?  And what part does the heat play, and  the frying pan?”

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No, this isn’t about backing up your work on another device or keeping a printout.   (Though that kind of backup is vital if you work on a computer.)   This is about one way to diagnose and fix a problem you have while writing, and it’s related (no surprise) to the problem you might have untangling yarn.

When your yarn (or story) has gotten itself in a tangle, you can either keep pulling forward, on the grounds that it will sort itself out (and sometimes it does, when you’re pulling yarn from the inside of a ball–the entire guts of the ball may come out, or just a small bit that the yarn has looped around)  or you can work backwards from the tangle to find that loop or knot and pick it loose.  This post is about the backing-up kind of fix. 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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There’s a new image up on the Character Gallery:  Aliam Halveric in late middle age.    Hescox has captured the tough, seasoned commander and the man who can (when appropriate) laugh at himself.    I’m very happy with it.

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 »

We had seventeen entries at the end, after I found John McDonald’s in the moderation queue.    Alas for what I said in the comments to the previous post, I don’t really use hamsters to generate random numbers, and I used an online random number generator instead.    I wish I had seventeen ARCs to hand out, because, folks, every one of you wrote something that made me chuckle, or cry, or just sit there feeling Paksworld around me.    So in the midnight dark, I decided that three ARCs would find a new home in this thing. Read the rest of this entry »

OK, it’s less than 12 hours to the deadline.   Time for all who haven’t put their name in the hat for an ARC of Crown of Renewal to come up with a little “Midwinter Tale” (it can be short.  It’s not going to be judged on anything but its existence in the comments section of this post) and email it to the ARC Contest post by midnight tonight.

Each person who enters will have one chance to win one of two ARCs up for grabs, no matter how many tales you enter…though I admit a special glow of thanks to those who entered more than one.    A random number generator will toss me the numbers, and I will announce the winners tomorrow (if we don’t have a power outage or something else happens to prevent me…this is winter, after all, even in Texas.)    Winners will then have 48 hours to send me their package-mail address, and the books will go out by the end of the week (I’m not sure when our local post office will close, other than New Year’s Day, but it often has restricted hours around holidays.)

Ideas come not to those who wait, but those who set fingers to the keyboard and start.  9.5 hours is plenty of time for a couple of paragraphs.

Yarn spun from the wool of Herdwick sheep, purchased from Crookabeck Farm.

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The good news is that I heard from Editor that ARCs are on their way.   That’s right, plural.   We will have a contest & drawing for two ARCs of Crown of Renewal.    Here’s your challenge for this year… Read the rest of this entry »

Periodically there are online discussions (and arguments) about what constitutes epic fantasy, who can and can’t write epic fantasy, which books are or are not epic fantasy, why someone should (or should not) write or try to write epic fantasy, what settings work or don’t work for epic fantasy, etc.   Given my writing schedule, I usually hear about these weeks to months after they appear and far too late to add my two (hundred and thirty seven) cents to the discussion.   But a recent one (October of this year) in another venue, that I happened across by following links on Twitter about something else (you know how Twitter links jump topics, right?  It’s how I ended up following a bunch of shepherds in the UK) drove me to comment even though I was very late to the party.   It was a sensible, thoughtful, interesting discussion, and I thought I had something to add to it.

It also led me to think more analytically about my own thoughts on epic fantasy.    And here they are. Read the rest of this entry »