Paksworld

Sometimes I doodle for awhile.  Sometimes a doodle is inspired by something some real artist put up online, that I saw while doing *legitimate* research.  In this case there was an image of a hill, a giant hump on the image, with fields going straight up and down and little doohickies representng different crops in different stripes.   And a tree or two at the top of the hill.  My doodle was also based on previous doodles when I outlined a space (sometimes square, sometimes triangular, sometimes octagonal, sometimes, as here, a rectangle) and filled it with other shapes and then treated the other shapes with textural notation (dots or lines) to suggest…something.  Occasionally color.  The recent re-organization of the office meant that my colored pencils were now…handy.  I love colored pencils.  (And inks, and paints and so on, but the PENCILS were handy.  Sp were some 3 x 5 cards, pastel colored, lined on one side and plain on the other.    I had already, a previous week, doodled another of my filled shapes with what suddenly looked to me like the English countryside views I see when indulging in horse videos.    And that B&W doodle inspired this one, which isn’t quite complete but was a “could this work for a landscape, given the limitations of size, media, the green card instead of a white background and so on.   I got to draw fiddly lines , play with the colored pencils, regret some of the lines, and then figure out what to do with the sky so it would look hot and summery and like there was a nice rainstorm over there on the far side of the near hills.  Then I had to get the thing into a camera (cellphone camera, n this case) and fiddle around until I remembered the fairly cockamamie way my cellphone can have images sucked out by the computer.

I”m not thrilled with it (why it’s not completely colored in, among other things) but I like the concept, and I like working in a small, well-defined space.  Yes, there’s a river, and a reservoir, and a variety of crops, and some woods, but…even finishing the coloring won’t fix its fundamental problems on the right side, and my white pencil barely shows the cumulus cloud structure, thanks to the green background.  OTOH it was fun and made good “breaks” in the writing work now and then.   I’d fill one section then let it sit, then later another one.  Other doodles of the week were all scratchy B&W, inspired by fighting with a ballpoint until it agreed to write again and then seeing what I could make of the strong up-and-down-slanted strokes of the “YOU WILL WRITE!” argument.  As soon as I “crossed” them with scribbles they looked like a coniferous woods (sort of!).

None of this is great art.  It’s mind-cleansing when stuck, though, and that works for me.

On the last workday of the work on my office, I found a large 3 ring binder, blue in color, that proved to contain much (not all) that I’d thought permanently lost of the background material for Paks.  Including the story of the shepherd who tried to rob Dort the Master Shepherd of some strands of wool from Dort’s sheep, who all have golden fleeces.  That story will come out later.   There are two versions of Torre’s tale, and two of Falk,  and more verses to the songs mentioned and sometimes partly quoted in the books, and so on. A story about the great bardic festival and the division for “martial music” performed by mercenaries.  About the way the Mother of Unicorns regained her sight after her eyes were stolen, about a young yeoman marshal’s mistakes and the justice of Gird

Why had I not found it years ago, before the Great Mess reached its height?  Well…memory was that those things had been put in a BLACK 3-ring binder.  And this one was BLUE.  So apparently, I didn’t look at the blue binder when searching for those lost things.  Only at the black binders.  One black binder did contain good stuff…printouts of my earliest-published stories, as submitted, from “Bargains” through to “Gut Feelings”.  Might be time to consider a collection of the early SF stories.

The study as it looks now, about 99% of the reorganization is finished.

But in the meantime and right now, a present for you:

Fair Were the Towers (C) 1985

Fair were the towers whose stones lie scattered,

White in the sun those ramparts rose.

Sweet were the flowers that twined in the gardens,

Then came the storms to them.

Fair were the princes whose bones lie scattered,

White in the sun their helmets gleamed.

Sweet were the ladies who bloomed for their pleasure,

Then came the wars to them.

Mikeli Vanyn the fair-spoken singer,

Bright harper of dances, will dance no more

Kevye the swordsman and Argalt his brother

Gannis and Torhal have died in the war.

Princes of Aare, their bones are all scattered,

The towers have fallen that called to the sky.

The Sandlord has taken them, Liart’s bane gnawed them,

All the fair gardens are withered and dry.

From notes:  This is the original version, said to be sung after the destruction of Old Aare by a singer called “The Black Harper”.  It became a favorite funeral song, with changes in the words as necessary: commonly the insertion of the names of the dead instead of the Aarean princes’ names, and a different final quartet.

…is hanging on like the last leaf on a tree in the fall.  “No, I still have juice, I’m not ready….”

I’m ready.  Next to last stitch came out this morning.  Last part of scab came off, too, so the furrow in my nose…shows.   Feels interesting, looks a bit like someone who had an accident (yes!) but not horrible.   A few places still have a dull sort of ache, where though the skin was only scraped, the bone under it was bruised.  But it’s not bad.

Along with that,  more horse feed sacks full papers and old magazines have gone out.  The supply of empty and *whole* (not rat-holed)  feed sacks from the feed room is WAAAY down.    We both have computers up and running our familiar software (well, sort of familiar, mostly familiar) .   I have learned to text images taken with the phone camera: a selfie of post-injury face the day after, and one of the much improved face (minus scabs, the sold row of stitches on the upper lip, etc.)   Still haven’t learned how to get the images in the camera into the computer.  Hmph.  But the new Paint Shop Pro is close enough to the old (aside from not letting me put several images into the work space to compare side by side) that I can certainly enjoy it.

The new Paksworld material (Horngard related) is coming along, over 3000 words, though I don’t know if they’re the *right* words yet.   I like the main character, Mardet DiAnzo.   And the journeyman baker.   And so on.

Important wildlife bit of the day:  the first yellow-billed cuckoo call  at our place this afternoon while feeding the horses.   Sun’s down and a cardinal started singing…no, not a mocker mocking a cardinal, the cardinal.  Sometimes in May birds just sing any old time.

Recovery from fall…much better.  Some stitches out, others will be soon.  Only one scab chunk left, but it’s starting to itch.

Both R- and I have new machines that are up and running;  new headphones that are more comfortable with better sound (so we can each enjoy our own favorite music, You Tube sites, etc.) without bothering the other.)  (Yes, it’s luxury.)   The complete tech overhaul is well along; there’s still some more stuff (I still don’t have a new printer; the Faure Requiem is still stuck in old machine’s CD drive, the RAM upgrade wasn’t accepted by new machine, data recovery will, I hope, pull all the old photos off old machine’s disk, but we’ll see.  But the improvement so far is MAJOR.

I’m working on some new material related to Horngard I, still uncertain if it will fit in Horngard II or be pulled out into a separate story/novella.  Happy with the feel.   I didn’t lose consciousness, even momentarily, in the faceplant, but I hit hard enough to be stunned (still sore places on bones that met the sidewalk) and there were little blinks of “not there” time from the 4 hours in the hospital, which after the effect of the 2018 concussion had me worried.  Not now.  I’ve read some seriously technical material  in two different journals and understood it fully and the writing itself tells me the brain’s healthy…or at least functional.  2018-2022 showed me I can’t write coherent, hangs-together fiction if the brain is seriously upset.  In fact, in 2018, I could barely write a coherent paragraph describing a current activity at first…so being able to write about merchants on a journey is reassuring.

Now it’s feed time for the critters.  We had an inch of rain we very much needed last night.

If it itches on the stitches, do not pull or scratch.  Endure the itch.  No, it’s not ready to come loose yet.

Do not catch a stitch with your thumbnail as you turn over in your sleep, or you will wake up wishing you hadn’t.

If your medical folk told you to use just warm water and gently pat…do not decide to use hydrogen peroxide.  (I didn’t.  I have experience with hydrogen peroxide.)

They will itch and sometimes they will hurt.  It’s OK.  It’s less hurt than the injury itself was.  Keep that comparison in mind.

If you have loose, dead, dry, skin hanging down and getting entangled in a stitch, you can cut that off (better, have someone else do it if it’s your lip skin…most of us have crappy depth perception at that distance.)

Like your mother told you when you skinned your knee or something…do not pick the scabs when they start coming loose at the edges. (I always did anyway.   And made them bleed again.  And got scolded for it.  We humans learn *slowly* unless the pain is substantial.)

When you thnik you just *have* to scratch or tug or pick, remember that “It’s all material for something…”  The next time your character has that injury, a stitch in that place, that many stittches or whatever…you have firsthand experience to write it powerfully or humorously or whatever you choose.

I’m telling myself this.  At this moment.  Guess how much good it’s doing and how well I follow my own advice.

Yesterday I  did myself an injury.   Tripped and went down hard, bled  all over a sidewalk, and spent hours in an ER  before I was finally sent home with a goodly number of stitches in my face and a bunch of related bruises, scrapes and cuts.  My only pair of bifocals was pretty much destroyed so I’m having to type w/o being able to see the screen clearly.  Renewed awareness of how much misery you can feel when not actuallly badly hurt.  And how lucky you can be when a bloody mess of a face does not involve any broken bones, lost teeth, damage to eyes, ears, mobility, etc.   Functually, stuff is working.  Yeah, I’m stiff, sore, and the worst parts of the face hurt some, but ye gods it could have been worse.  It will be ouchy for some days, we hope the stitches stay put for ten days, and  so on, but once I was stitched back together, the worst is the effect on those who see it.  I look like someone who was punched hard and more than once in the face (due to managing to hit most of my face in one fall.  The nose is a particular gruesome vision.

The only picture I have (the hospital took more, before the stitching, to plan the reconstruction)  is on my phone and I don’t know how to get itt from there to, say, a horror to show my friends.  Saves them wincing, as long as they don’t come visit.   As with all things that happen to writers, it’s *material*…at some point, details will show up in something I write.  Wonderful husband made me pudding (soft  custard) to eat last nigit annd today since I’m not supposed to chew anything firm for some days lest I dislodge a stitch beforetime.  Now I’m going to try soft scrambled eggs…without being able to see when they’re done.

There’s a move in sword & buckler fighting known as “giving him mustachios with the buckler”  and I can now say I have a clue what that feels like.  A pebbled concrete sidewalk makes a good “buckler.”

Deeds of Youth will be released in mid-July (roughly)  and I will post links for pre-purchase as soon as I get them from publisher.  The collection has eight stories, arranged pretty much by age of the main character (that is slightly messed up in the last story, but it’s pretty close.)  Total length is, I think, once again a little under 50,000 words and it should look like a green book the size & shape of Deeds of Honor. and

I should be able to reveal the cover and the exact date,  and the links, within the next couple of weeks.  The release date is on my husband’s birthday, which I hope he will accept as part of his birthday celebration.  Wondering if I can get the bakery down at the big supermarket to do a version of the cover with DEEDS OF RICHARD THE BEST on it for cake decor.  Don’t tell him.  (He doesn’t read this blog.  I don’t think he reads this blog.)

Meanwhile I’ll be checking copy edits (due by May 13), working on putting together a new computer system for both of us, and trying to get the horses to the vet’s for their annual shots, Coggins test, and dental stuff.

I got sick last week.  I’m better now but not well.   The Covid test was negative.  When I quit having spasms of uncontrollable coughing and a headache half as big as Texas, I’ll be much happier and online more.   Don’t worry…today is a LARGE improvement over yesterday!

Having acquired the hub with an SD card slot,  I finally got brave and put my working “fiction” SD card in  (not easy as it requires me to put it in upside down…it wouldn’t go in at all first, either way, but finally did work.  I had the camera card for testing.  I still don’t have my favorite photo software on this machine, so that’s next…getting the writing straightened out is primary.

So I put that card in this morning, mental fingers crossed…and yes, both Horngard I and Horngard II are in there, apparently unharmed.  I had also saved the Paksworld stories folder, and the specific “Deeds of…” folders before the wreckage started, so I have those files again.  The stories I least wanted to have to type in from the books they were in, and  the unfinished ones and some notes.  And some others of serious interest, including some passwords.  Also realized that I’d made a continuity error in Horngard I (from Limits of Power, which I was re-reading to check up on something for Horngard II.  Ha!  Porfur was Marshal in Ifoss, not Fossnir (as I foolishly wrote in Horngard I.)   In fact, I’d conflated the layout of Fossnir to be more like Ifoss…so I’ve got to deal with all that and redraw some town plans (did not have the old town plans anywhere I could find.  SIGH.

How could I be that careless, you ask?  Well…time and concussions will mess things up.  Alone or together.  Gwennothlin, Aris’s older sister, spends some time in Fossnir, which is closer to the Andressat border than Ifoss.   Aris visits Fossnir a few times as a courier earlier in Horngard I, but there’s no interaction there (readers know he’s come from there on one assignment, but not anything he did while there.  Gwenno, OTOH, has a reason to be there and interact with people.  (Wait, you say, what is Gwenno doing in Aarenis at all?  Well.  That’s a long story. Patience.)

Turned in the letter for the annexation today, too, so I hope the city accepts it.  Probably not before the May council meeting.  Otherwise, I need to make another trip to a bigger town (with a Target store…)   SIGH.

Too many days without sunlight and my brain starts daydreaming about sleeping the clock around and waking to a sunny morning.  Kicking it out of bed is necessary, even when it tells me the balance mechanism is sub-par.  We had several days of heavy cloud with occasional thunder “somewhere” and not much actual water from the sky.  Finally however we got an inch over about 18 hours, including in a last 15 minute thunder on the roof at 1 am Saturday morning (it wasn’t the rain but a big BOOM!! overhead that woke me.)

No sun, though.  Easter Eve is a traditional time for Hispanic families in Texas to have big “end of Lent” parties, and our neighbors did.  You can tell when the pinata goes up by the squeals of the younger children and the “thwack-thwack” of whatever stick they’re hitting it with.  [drat this touchpad.  I just deleted the rest of that paragraph, with the incident of soccer ball recovery…grr.)

Skipping ahead.  Plot bomb burst in my head this morning and there’s a little over 2000 words of something new.  You may remember that in Limits of Power, Stammel dies delaying some pirates coming to the village where he’s been living.   After that, when the people return from the caves where they hid, they decide to honor him by naming children in his memory:  Matthis for the boys and Paksen for the girls (they’re not literate and never got Paks’s full name because he talked a little about having trained Paks in Fox Company.  Stammel stayed with Cadlin in that vill, so Cadlin’s next children carry Stammel’s family name as well:  Matthis Stammel and Paksen Stammel.  Everyone else names them as usual with the parent’s name: Matthis Volson, Telson, Rortson, etc and Paksen Voldotir, Rortdotir, Arndotir, etc.  This so Stammel’s name never dies out.

The children grow up knowing why they carry these unusual (for that region) names, and they…get ideas.  To live up to Stammel’s memory, shouldn’t they figure out a way to protect not just their village but the whole island?  Grownups tell them it’s impossible.  But…Matthis and Paksen Stammel are now (where I’m writing) meeting with Meddthal Andressat in the South Marches headquarters…and there’s this younger Lord Marrakai there, too.  They have a Fox Company ring…I know (I looked it up and sure enough) that Dragon took Stammel’s ring up to the Duke’s Stronghold with Stammel’s body.  But nobody would say Dragon couldn’t reproduce a copy for the village, esp. given that Dragon will certainly hear about the decision to name a boy and a girl in each family for Stammel and Paksen.  And the vill does not know Dragon took the ring to give Arcolin, so they don’t wonder when Cadlin finds it on the beam in his workshop where the sack of crossbow bolts hung.

The young folk now have a net of acquaintances between the vills–not just with the next one over but all the way around.  They’ve chosen lookout points to watch for pirates.   Pirates have come back several times, but now more vills empty ahead of invasion.  The adults are beginning to realize something might be done, though none of them have clue of what, or how, or where to find the resources.  Pirates being pirates, they decide to let that island alone for awhile to recover some stuff worth stealing and be less watchful.  Meanwhile Matthis and Paksen Stammel  travel to the mainland in one of the fishing boats to find someone who knows where Fox soldiers are.  Hence they’re in Cha…and meet someone who met Stammel (back in Siniava’s War and later) and someone who knew Paksenarrion when he was a boy in the far north (which these young people have never heard of.   That there is a mainland…but they imagine it as a really big island.)

But certainly word will go quickly to Fox Company that people who knew Stammel on this island have come to Cha…and from there to the north, to Arcolin. The right music for some of the writing is Elgar’s Engima Variations, esp. the Nimrod section.  (Earlier part went fine to Chopin Nocturnes.)

Oh, you want a snippet?   But of course.  Except they may get cluttered up with Word Sekrit Decoder Stuff.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………….(And yes the Enigma Variations “Nimrod” fits this particular passage.  Esp. toward the end where the soldier realizes…this is a story he’s heard before, years ago.

The two stood looking for a long moment, then walked forward.  Without actually looking at them, the two soldiers blocked their way to the door with the crossed staves of their weapons.  “Halt,” said one, and “State your business,” said the other.

“We need to see the Andressat lord,” said Paksen.

“Who are you?  Where from?”

“I’m Paksen Stammel.  From the island out there in the big ocean.”

“Which island?”

She had no idea how to tell him.  The island was just ‘the island’ or ‘our island’ to the islanders.   “It’s where we live; I don’t know what other people call it.”

The soldiers looked at each other.  The one to her heart side tapped the haft of his weapon on the stone step three times.  “Wait,” he said.  “Someone will come.  Not the lord, someone who will know what to do with you.  Do you have a letter or a word from someone Andressat might know?”

“We have his-someone’s ring.”

“You will need to show it.”

Matthis pulled it out of his shirt on its thong, just as another man in a long robe of yellow edged with white came to the door.  “What’s going on?” he asked the soldiers.

“These two.  Fisherfolk, I suspect, from an island.  Say they want to see the Andressat lord and that one’s got a ring.”

“An island…plenty of islands…name?”

Paksen shook her head.  “We don’t know what other people call it,” she said again.  “It’s just our island to us.  Matthis and me aren’t fisherfolk; we live up the mountain.”

“Name?” the man asked.

“Paksen Stammel,” she said.

He blinked.  “Stammel. That’s not an island name…your father?”

“No, Blind Stammel,” Matthis said.  “He lived on our island a short time and saved us—well, the olders, we hadn’t been born yet—from pirates.  He said he was a soldier somewhere else.”

“Sergeant,” the man in the robe said to one of the soldiers.  “Could that be–?”

“Let me see that ring, young man,” the soldier said.  “And your name?”

“Matthis Stammel.”  He took the thong off over his head and handed the ring to the soldier, who looked, and took in a sudden breath.

“By the Dragon, it is!  Fox Company ring.  Must be three hands of years at least since he was blinded, more like four.  I was up in Valdaire when I’d heard the rumor and then saw him riding past with the Duke.” The soldier looked hard at Matthis.  “And you’re named for him?  But not his body-son?”

“No.  Cadlin’s my father.  Blind Stammel lived in our house on the island.  That’s why my sister and I have his last name.”

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