NewBook is now complete, where complete means the story makes sense end to end, the plot and subplots are correctly articulated (in the sense of how a skeleton is articulated), there are causes for effects, and effects from causes, and the motivations of POV characters, in particular are shown through behavior, not just chit-chat.\u00a0 Though frankly I think any female person will know *exactly* why Gwenno was bored with the Royal Guard.<\/p>\n
It is a proper Paksworld book in size\u00a0 (a bit under 170,000 words)\u00a0 and geographic scope (smaller than some, but covering locations from northern Tsaia, in Arcolin’s domain to well south and west of Valdaire in Aarenis.)\u00a0 Chronologically it’s a spring\/summer\/fall book, even though there’s a blizzard in it.\u00a0 It’s an *early* blizzard and melts back into a cold nasty wet period.\u00a0 The gap between this book and the last previous Paksworld book is about 5 years, so the page who woke up, ran upstairs when everyone else was spelled, and pulled the non-working rope that wakes the Bells of Verella only in real disasters ….is now a late teenager\u00a0 and considered a young man.\u00a0 The prince with no memory is 20 or 21.\u00a0 An 18 year old squire of Duke Verrakai is 23.\u00a0 And so on, including the people who were hale and healthy five years ago and now…aren’t.\u00a0 Some of them.<\/p>\n
It also has horses, swords, spears, lances, thieves (not nice ones), brigands (ditto), pirates (ditto) ,\u00a0 bad relatives, good relatives, an overprotected little boy who isn’t that little or shouldn’t be, a birth, some deaths, and–because it involves the Matter of Horngard–Dragon.\u00a0 Several assumptions about eldest girls in a family.\u00a0 But also politics, economics, history, psychology, and such things.\u00a0 Oh, and a song.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Sung in an ordinary way and people who also make weird scary noises some other way.<\/p>\n
Someone on a Twitter writing group asked people who were writing things\u00a0 “What is your book about?”\u00a0 and I always draw a blank on that because I think my books (and most books) are about more than one thing, and different readers will fix on one or more of the possibilities.\u00a0 But this book–still untitled, though its “barn name” is Horngard, name of the place in which a lot of important things happen–is a story about friendships as people grow up, trauma, memory, honor, personality, politics (et al) from the above list, and so on.\u00a0\u00a0 The “lead” characters are two boys (in the Paladin’s Legacy books<\/strong>) who became friends, were separated by violence,\u00a0 and their meeting again 5 years later.\u00a0\u00a0 One has lost all memory of his past due to a traumatic brain injury.\u00a0 The other temporarily loses the memory of having seen his friend again, for the first time in five years because someone else thinks it’s the wrong time for them to be together again.\u00a0 Now the boys are men.<\/p>\n The loss of memory, whether temporary or permanent, has profound effects on them.\u00a0\u00a0 It interferes with “agency”–that capacity to make things happen, to not be just an object swept along, but to make decisions that work, that move other objects.\u00a0\u00a0 If you do not know–if you have no story of–your past, it’s a mental amputation of the information most of us use to make decisions and act from.\u00a0\u00a0 I remember the first time I was lifted up to sit on a horse; I remember how wonderful it was to be up there, able to see so far,\u00a0 to not be blocked in by the legs of older children and adults.\u00a0 That memory starts the chain of my understanding of how I feel about horses.\u00a0 I remember being in an open boat out in the Gulf of Mexico and peering over the side into the green depths…seeing something large rising out of the dimness far below and come up closer, closer, and reveal a mouthful of very sharp teeth.\u00a0 That memory starts the chain of my understanding my relationship to deep water.\u00a0\u00a0 Horses are wonderful, they’re freedom, they’re lifting me out of limitations.\u00a0 Deep water is scary, dangerous, limiting me to less vision, less freedom, less opportunity.\u00a0 These are not “facts” about horses or deep water, but the memories are at the roots of my attitudes, my deepest feelings.<\/p>\n Soo…what about a snippet, then?\u00a0 And a test on it?<\/p>\n Here are the words of a song (translated into English because I write in English) which can be sung to the tune of one of my favorite songs.\u00a0 The song itself was not, originally, English. \u00a0 Can you figure out from reading the words what the music is?\u00a0 (Don’t go looking over in the Universes blog because it’s listed there.)\u00a0\u00a0 These words appear in this book (unless an editor rules them out) and I hope to write some music to sing it to *other* than the one I know.<\/p>\n Dragonkin we stand before you<\/p>\n Dragon’s iron wings fly o’er you<\/p>\n Dragon’s iron teeth will score you<\/p>\n We will stand for all<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Though we tire, though we hunger<\/p>\n Though we grow not any younger<\/p>\n We will stand as stone in thunder<\/p>\n All will stand for all<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Men of Horngard ready<\/p>\n We will all stand steady<\/p>\n Taste the iron of our spears<\/p>\n Your swords will never wake our fears<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Our hearts lighten, our eyes brighten<\/p>\n Blood or death, they do not frighten<\/p>\n We of Horngard, Dragon’s kin,we!<\/p>\n Never will we yield.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n If you do catch on quickly, just answer with “Got it” or something like, until others have a chance to answer.<\/p>\n I can’t find on YouTube the version I like of the original, which was a capella, not over-enhanced with orchestra\u00a0 or even piano accompaniment.\u00a0 It doesn’t NEED that.\u00a0 It does need a good stout choir.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" NewBook is now complete, where complete means the story makes sense end to end, the plot and subplots are correctly articulated (in the sense of how a skeleton is articulated), there are causes for effects, and effects from causes, and the motivations of POV characters, in particular are shown through behavior, not just chit-chat.\u00a0 Though […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52,45,115,5],"tags":[22,20,51,107],"class_list":["post-2852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editing","category-revisions","category-snippet","category-the-writing-life","tag-characters","tag-progress-report","tag-revision","tag-the-writing-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2852"}],"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=2852"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2852\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2853,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2852\/revisions\/2853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}