Paksworld

There’s a lot of chilly weather around, including down here in the middle of Texas…before the front hit, early yesterday morning, we were having a fairly balmy 50-something-degree F. night.   By dawn, we were down some degrees, and by early afternoon, when I was trying to hang out laundry in a cold wind, the laundry was freezing to the clothesline with amazing speed.  (Smelled really good when I brought it in, though!)  Read the rest of this entry »

As you may have noticed, I also cook…bake bread, make stock and soups.  So the kitchens of Paksworld have always interested me.  What do the people eat, and how do they fix it, and why?

With Midwinter Feast coming up (theirs, not ours) this seemed like a good topic to talk about. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m basing a lot of my longbow archery on information derived from the Mary Rose bows, as reported in (among other places) Strickland & Hardy’s The Great Warbow, which includes a history of the longbow in use from the Battle of Hastings up to the Tudor period.   (It’s also a great temptation to spend way too much time on details that aren’t plotworthy…how to conserve and then revive bows that have been buried in silt and salt water for centuries, for instance, something no one is trying to do in this book.  On the other hand, the horrible but effective treatment one noble received for an arrow wound in the face may show up sometime.  Not right now, though.)  Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, in preparation for going over to the ranch to bring home some of the frozen meat from Big Bull,  we needed to reduce the bulk of the un-cut bones of Big Bull that came home with us initially.    I make soup out of beef bones (good soup) and then the well-cooked-out bones are stuck in the garden soil to decompose.

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Under the heading of research:  yesterday disappeared in 13-14 hours of preparing for and beginning the process of converting a 1500 pound bull into meat in the freezer.    This isn’t myfirst experience of home butchery, but it’s certainly the most strenuous and exhausting, and finding one’s limits (no, I could not lift the bull’s head by the ears…nor work the whole time without lengthier rest periods than some of the others involved) is not fun.

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Reached 497 just now, with the word count for the whole coming down slowly.

Here’s an example for discussion:  A courier arrives with an urgent message.  While the courier catches his breath, the recipient opens the message case.

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Did I ever mention, in Sheepfarmer’s Daughter, how many sons and daughters the Count of Andressat had or their names or ages?   I know the Company met one of them at/near one of the Andressat forts, but I can’t be sure more info wasn’t given another time.

It’s suddenly become important.

Drawing fantasy maps always brings up the question of how far is it really from here to there…from, say, Halveric Steading to Chaya, or Fiveway to  Valdaire?  Eager readers may try to figure out the scale of a fantasy map and thus determine what the real travel distances and times “should” be.

For some of you, what I’m going to talk about is familiar–you yourselves have done long hikes, ridden long distances, and so you know what goes into “a day’s travel.”  But for those who haven’t, here’s why the map is only a rough guide.

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But I’m telling you anyway.   One of the ways you get multi-sensory accuracy into a work is to get it into your life.   Back when I was first writing for publication, I was immersed in a busy life that included regular doses of excitement and gore: I was a volunteer with the county EMS, and our station lay between a military base in a dry county and the nearest bars.   Car wrecks (lots), fires, explosions, fights,  death by violence and death that came as quietly as a sigh.   If it’s part of a human and it breaks, bleeds, or leaks–I’ve seen it.  I also had a rideable horse then, and rode almost daily.

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One really good thing about train travel is terrain.  Lots and lots of terrain.  Some of it isn’t useful for these books (south Texas brush country) but some will be (desert, mountains, sandstorms, grassland…)   In a car, I have to keep the car on the road and notice terrain and plants and wildlife only very peripherally (except the wildlife driving the other cars and trucks.)   In a train…though I can’t control where we go or how fast, I also don’t have to worry about it–there are tracks, and someone up front with their hands on the controls.  (Or so I’m told.)

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