First a thank-you to y’all for your patience.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It has been a…um…very busy time here at the old homestead.\u00a0 Tonight is the night of the Messiah performance, and that will make four days in a row of driving to the city for 3+ hours of singing (and on Sunday I drove in early to sing the first service at church, then drove home to do the other stuff.)<\/p>\n
Your reward for the patience is a snippet, after a short review of revision progress.\u00a0\u00a0 I have finally (FINALLY) got important two important events tied in neatly with all their threads connected.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 As I near the end of a book, everything has more and more threads hanging off it (it’s connected to this, that, and the other in various ways–foreshadowings that may go back several books,\u00a0 links to contemporaneous happenings, hooks set that will turn out later to be significant, etc.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The next to last book in a group is even more rife with threads for every major event, internal and external.\u00a0\u00a0 And every one of those little stinkers needs to be woven in, as invisibly as possible, so the pattern is unbroken.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 But enough about the work in progress:\u00a0 Herewith a snippet from the work to come.<\/p>\n
Where: Chaya\u00a0 When: winter\u00a0\u00a0 Why: someone was murdered<\/p>\n
Carlion and Siger both knelt beside Kieri.\u00a0 Siger grunted as he looked at the wounds.\u00a0 “These are from arrows–and the shafts pulled free.”\u00a0 Together he and Kieri rolled [redacted] body on its side.<\/p>\n
“Longbow arrow?” Kieri asked. “There’s no penetration to the back–could they have been crossbows?”<\/p>\n
“Not one of our blackwood bows,” Carlion said.\u00a0 “So certainly not a ranger or a Royal Archer.\u00a0 Nor crossbow bolts–the Pargunese bolts make a different wound.\u00a0 But the elves–”\u00a0 He swallowed and went on slowly.\u00a0 ” The elves, lord king, use a smaller bow sometimes, and slenderer shafts.\u00a0 The wood–they won’t say what the wood is.”<\/p>\n
“And these wounds are from a blade,” Siger went on, pointing to the slashes in the tunic.\u00a0 “Someone wanted him dead for certain.”<\/p>\n
………<\/p>\n
“If it was elves,” Carlion said.\u00a0 “This looks…this looks like rage to me.\u00a0 Some quarrel among the elvenkind.”<\/p>\n
……………………………………………………………..<\/p>\n
In Echoes<\/em>, you find out who was killed.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In Book IV, Kieri finds out who killed the victim.<\/p>\n This is not the killer’s first or last murder.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I knew something was screwy with this character the first time I wrote the character, but not what.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In fact, at this point in Echoes<\/em> I didn’t know who it was yet.\u00a0\u00a0 Now I do, and it’s clear that a number of people have had very narrow escapes.<\/p>\n ………………………………………………………………………<\/p>\n Bonus snippet:\u00a0\u00a0 Where: Mahieran’s country house.\u00a0 When: winter.\u00a0\u00a0 Dorrin, Duke Mahieran,\u00a0 Dorrin’s squire Beclan, and some guards arrive.<\/p>\n When they reached the house, torchlight glittered on the snow outside and the house windows blazed with light.\u00a0 Servants came with a padded chair to carry the Duke inside; Beclan started to follow and then looked back at Dorrin.\u00a0 “My lord?” he said just as his mother, Celbrin, appeared, wrapped in a fur cape.<\/p>\n She grabbed Beclan and hugged him, then turned to Duke Mahieran:\u00a0 “If that person<\/em> is out there in the dark, I will not have that person<\/em> in my house.\u00a0 She nearly killed our son and now you come home injured–”<\/p>\n ….\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 …..\u00a0 ….\u00a0 (stuff happens)<\/p>\n “Drop the knife, Celbrin,” Mahieran said.\u00a0\u00a0 He waved servants forward.\u00a0 “Take it, if she will not drop it.”<\/p>\n “You will find out!” Celbrin said, her voice high and shrill.\u00a0 “She is not what she pretends to be.\u00a0 She brings doom with her.”<\/p>\n …………………………………………………………..<\/p>\n The Mahieran family has had some unwanted adventures, and is about to have more.\u00a0\u00a0 Celbrin isn’t exactly crazy, but she’s also not what she thinks she is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" First a thank-you to y’all for your patience.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It has been a…um…very busy time here at the old homestead.\u00a0 Tonight is the night of the Messiah performance, and that will make four days in a row of driving to the city for 3+ hours of singing (and on Sunday I drove in early to sing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,94,115,5],"tags":[106,62,51,28,107],"class_list":["post-1380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-contents","category-echoes-of-betrayal","category-snippet","category-the-writing-life","tag-contents","tag-craft-of-writing","tag-revision","tag-snippet","tag-the-writing-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1380"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1380"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1380\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1384,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1380\/revisions\/1384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}