Rachel Neumeier's Blog, page 99

Suelen Hardcover: Out Soon —

I hadn’t really intended to do a hardcover for Suelen because it seemed pretty short and the smallest size for a hardcover is 6×9.

But a reader asked me about that, and actually I sort of wanted a hardcover copy myself, so I went back to the cover artist and asked them to do a hardcover version. Which they did, and so I just hit “publish” on that. It turns out to be just about the same length as Nikoles. Not sure how, since it’s about 15,000 words shorter, but so it is.

If you too would like a hardcover copy, it should appear on Amazon in a few days.

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Tasmakat Update

Moving along, moving along. I’m doing an average of 4000 words a day, but not paying all that much attention. This isn’t a book where I have to set a minimum and try to stick to it. (Yet, at least.) (Hopefully that won’t happen, though.) Even after all this time, I’m kinda surprised how many words it takes to get anywhere. I know I need these things to happen: a, b, c, d, e, f, g. But then I wind up having to write a whole transitional chapter to get from d to e and another half chapter before I arrive at f, and so on. How much of the transitional stuff will be in the final draft? Don’t know. I never know, not this early.

I thought I’d have arrived at the river by now, but no. Maybe today, maybe tomorrow. One more scene and then I’d like to move everything ahead briskly and boom, river, but we’ll see how it goes.

During the journey back through the winter lands, I’ve been building two main plotlines: I’ve been developing the relationships between Ryo and Darra and between Ryo and Elaro because it would be impossible not to while showing anything of that journey at all; and I’ve had to show the journey because I’m using it to develop the main personal problem that is going to be a Thing in this novel. Many of you have undoubtedly figured out the basic shape of this problem, though I think some elements may surprise you.

We have not yet had a glimpse of the main, what should I call it? impersonal problem, plot problem, whatever. We won’t see that for a while. Quite a while. A long time, actually. No need for me to look nearly that far ahead as yet.

Crossing the river into the summer country will end the first chunk of the story. This story is very chunkable. If I were doing it in parts — Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV — we’d cross the river and step into Part II. I’m not going to divide it up that way explicitly, but that’s how it’s going to feel. The cast of characters will change a lot, as Darra and Elaro turn back toward the north. Geras will definitely go on toward Avaras, but I don’t think Suyet and Lalani will; I’m almost sure they’ll stay in the borderlands. I believe Esau and Keraunani will turn up, though I’m not sure whether they’ll have a particularly noticeable role and I doubt they’ll appear in Part III or IV, except perhaps right at the end. I would like to bring in Aras’ wife and daughters and most particularly his little granddaughter, but this story is going to be long and I don’t believe any of them are going to be important. Although I can see one way they might be. We’ll almost certainly meet them, regardless. I wrote a little of that scene a long time ago and don’t really expect to cut that part. I know a lot of readers would like to meet them!

Lots of stuff to do the moment we’re across the river. I had to sit down and make a list in the order that Aras might consider most crucial and time sensitive to least, because so many important things have to happen and they all have to happen fast. Dealing with Kerren Rahavet and his family is at the top, but maybe not right at the top? Not sure, but I think a few other things might have to happen first, even though the thing with the Rahavet family is direly important. I mean, imagine the mail that has stacked up for Aras over the past year. Including more than one letter from the summer king, by the way. Not to mention that he hasn’t seen his wife and family for more than that year. And none of that is the part I’ve actually written, even though I’ve written two scenes that do occur in that part of the story.

Hard to guess how many words it might take to get on the road toward Avaras. More than a few.

I’m at about 84,000 words now, by the way. For an ordinary book, that would be about halfway to the end. (A short book would be finished! Wow, that’s hard to even think about!) Instead, this is about a quarter of the way to the end. Or so.

Questions that various people have asked fall into three main categories:

A) If Tasmakat is really long, do you plan to publish it in two pieces?

No. The big reason to do that is marketing. That isn’t relevant for Book 6 in a series. If the thing turns out to be 900 pp long, fine. That’s actually not that much longer than Tarashana. (Tarashana is 210,000 words, in case you wondered.) Tasmakat is going to be long, no doubt about that. I’ll put a slightly heftier price on it on the theory that fans of the series will be willing to pay a bit more for the final Ryo POV installment, and besides that, the length will be an asset in KU. There’s no practical reason that length is a problem.

B) Are you going to do ______ to ______?

Maybe! But, listen, though I don’t want to provide actual spoilers, I will say that I expect most readers will enjoy how the story ends.

C) When is Tasmakat going to come out?

I hope I will have a complete draft by, say, October sometime. That gives me time to produce a really, really long draft if I keep going at about 4000 words per day. But then comes revision, and proofing and a lot more proofing, and a little more revision.

Also, I was pretty happy with how many preorders Suelen picked up. My actual goal, which I may not make but I think is achievable, is to put Tasmakat up for preorder waaaaay in advance and get something close to 1000 preorders. I have the cover for Tasmakat already, which is a first, having the cover in hand well before finishing a draft! I’ll put Tasmakat up the moment I have a complete draft, way before it’s ready for release, and probably that means the release date will be about a year from now.

Meanwhile … back to trying to get all the way to the river …

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Nine Weeks and Off Into the World They Go

Boy 1, now Oliver, with a new friend.Boy Two, now Montgomery (Monty for short) with his aunt Kimmie.Monty again, because he’s so excessively cute in this picture I had to include itBoy Three, not quite sure what his name might be, with a somewhat suspicious friend.Boy Three is a tiiiiired puppy after his long day learning about his new home.Boy Three One More Time because this is such a great pictureBoy Four will stay with me for another three weeks or so.Boy Four misses his brothers, but is already starting to focus on his cousins as playmates

Because I would never leave a puppy isolated in the puppy room after he suddenly becomes a single puppy, last night was Boy Four’s first night in the bedroom downstairs with the rest of us. This goes one of two ways: either the puppy sleeps right through the night (YAY) or he doesn’t (Oh, well). It’s a good idea to tire out the puppy before bedtime if possible. Then you just accommodate the puppy, whichever way it turns out. I played tug with Boy Four and got him to bounce around for half an hour before bedtime. Then we went to bed almost at the normal time.

Boy Four settled down with Naamah in her giant crate, whimpered once at the strangeness of this new arrangement, went promptly to sleep, woke up at 12:30, and told me he needed to go out. That crate really is enormous, so it’s a good thing he decided he’d better wake me up rather than just doing his business in the crate. But he’s been used to going outside for a month, so that’s what I expected, if he woke up at all.

Fine, I said, and took him out. He did his business promptly and went right back to sleep.

And woke me up at three thirty. If it’d been four, I’d have just gotten up, but three thirty is a little early even for me, so I took him out. Nothing. That was not why he was awake. I put him back with Naamah. He told me he was still unhappy. I took him up on the bed with me and he settled right down and went back to sleep, so that was certainly clear. He really is a human-centered little guy.

This is what I recommend: do stuff to make a puppy comfortable and happy and secure. Doesn’t matter if you don’t want a puppy on the bed. Doesn’t matter if you intend to crate the puppy in the living room in the future. Doesn’t matter if you plan to leave him loose in the house when he’s an adult, closing the bedroom door in his face. All that is fine — for the future. It’s not fine for a baby.

For this first week or two, the goal should be: Make the puppy feel secure. That way you are not setting him up for separation anxiety later. This common problem is caused by bad handling of a sensitive dog. The sensitivity is not the problem. The bad handling is the problem. It’s all about security at first followed by careful independence training later. Both are important.

As a puppy settles into his home, he will also become more able to stay in a crate in the bedroom, a crate elsewhere, out in the house, wherever. You correct barking and whining in the crate later, largely by making sure the puppy is tired when he goes into the crate, then ignoring a minor fuss and opening the door when the puppy is quiet. You don’t “let him cry it out” at night in a new home or a new situation, most definitely not on the first night. That teaches the puppy that he has indeed suffered abandonment. This is totally inappropriate and harmful. Security first. Then quiet in the crate, later.

Boy Four loves the crate in the living room:

This is Naamah’s crate, so she can have her supper in peace. She’s also the one who takes toys in there because she’s very possessive of toys.

The door is open except at mealtimes. Boy Four discovered that days ago. He goes in there on his own all the time when he is sleepy. He hasn’t been a bit bothered yet that I occasionally close the door and latch it. He’s sensitive and a bit of a talker, but also sweet and accommodating. I’m glad I haven’t had to give him up yet … and I’m betting he’s sleeping through the night before the end of the week. Puppies basically all do if you handle them properly during the first few days.

This will be the last puppy post — I hope you’ve enjoyed the past nine weeks of puppy Mondays! I’m SO GLAD that nothing disastrous happened along the way! I would not have wanted to share THAT with everybody who just wanted a dose of puppy cuteness. A friend of mine just had a semi-disastrous litter, and I’ve sure had my share, and the truth is you just never know. But these puppies all did just feel healthy and good to me from the start, even Tiny Boy Four, even when he was slow to gain at first, so I thought I’d risk it, and it turned out to work beautifully. I might have another litter this year, and if so, hopefully the puppies will turn out as nice as Leda’s boys.

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Yeah, Pile of Bodies, So What

Here’s a post at Writers Helping Writers: “They’re All Gonna Die!” Wait, Why Does That Matter?

This title amused me, but I also think it’s a good question. Quite often, someone takes to heart the advice to open with action and BOOM! Bombs go off, swords flash, an angry god stomps a city into the mud, whatever. And that scene, whatever it involves, is dead boring. You’ve probably seen scenes like that. They’ve probably been in prologues that are all about the grand sweep of violent history, though certainly there are lots of examples of closer, more intimate-scale violence that take place on page one of chapter one, and lots of those still fail.

That’s what I thought of when I read the title of that post: novels that open with violent action that is boring and leaves the reader (me, anyway) uninvolved, uninterested, probably confused about what’s going on and why it matters and who I ought to be rooting for and why. Let me see if that’s actually where this post is heading …

Yes, this is a post about exactly this problem:

After all, readers don’t know who this character is and have no reason to care about their fate. For all readers know, this might be the villain who’s trying to escape justice and when saved here, will return by the end of the story to cause more problems for the real protagonist. Or maybe they’re a superhero who can fly, making this situation no big deal. Or maybe they’re faking their dilemma and have their feet solidly planted on a ledge. Or…

In other words, stakes alone aren’t enough to pull readers into our story. So how can we make our stakes matter? Let’s look at the movie Everything Everywhere All at Once for 3 lessons on how to make our stakes—and our story—matter.

I wouldn’t say make the stakes matter. I would say make the protagonist matter. Stakes as such are never interesting or engaging. The protagonist’s life is at stake? So what? I’m sure that matters to the protagonist, but until we have a feel for her, why should it matter to us? The world may be destroyed? So what? Until we’re invested in that world, why should that matter? There are plenty of other fictional worlds just waiting for our attention. It’s a lot more important to either make the protagonist emotionally engaging OR engage the reader’s curiosity about something OR both. Then the stakes may be important. Which is exactly what the post is saying, so let’s rephrase it that way:

How do we make our protagonist matter to the reader?

Before reading this post, by the way, I hadn’t seen (or even heard of) the movie in question. Let me pause to say that this is not quite what I expected!

With her laundromat teetering on the brink of failure and her marriage to wimpy husband Waymond on the rocks, overworked Evelyn Wang struggles to cope with everything, including a tattered relationship with her judgmental father Gong Gong and Joy, her daughter. And, as if facing a gloomy midlife crisis wasn’t enough, Evelyn must brace herself up for an unpleasant meeting with an impersonal bureaucrat: Deirdre, the shabbily dressed IRS auditor. However, as the stern agent loses patience, an inexplicable multiverse rift becomes an eye-opening exploration of parallel realities. … Can weary Evelyn fathom the irrepressible force of possibilities, tap into newfound powers, and prevent an evil entity from destroying the thin, countless layers of the unseen world?

Sounds like fun! And obviously this post thinks the opening is good. Back to the post and those three suggestions:

A) Provide Context. This means human context. YES. This is what I mean when I say you have to make the protagonist emotionally engaging. “In the movie EEAaO, the first act introduces the family members in ways that make the audience understand and sympathize with their struggles. The audience learns every characters’ goals, motivations, and initial conflicts. That information gives the audience the context for watching new conflicts and struggles and understanding what’s at stake.”

B) Make It Personal. YES. Same as above. “In EEAaO, Evelyn rejects the initial “call to adventure” because the stakes of the fate of the multiverse are too big for her to relate to in a personal way. She doesn’t fully embrace her role in the story—shifting from reactive to proactive—until she feels a connection to the situation. Audience members have similar reactions: The whole multiverse dilemma feels like an interesting story, sure, but the reveal of Evelyn’s personal connection to the stakes feels like a gut punch.”

C) Make the Reader Care About the Protagonist. YES. Exactly the same as above. “In EEAaO, the stakes in the movie shift from small and personal to too-big and impersonal, then big and personal, and finally back to small-ish (but still much bigger than in Act One) and personal. This shift works because we’ve grown to care about all these characters so much.”

This is NOT three different suggestions. This is the exact same suggestion phrased three different ways, or viewed from three different angles. The only suggestion is (C). Everything else is part of (C) or only matters if (C) already works.

The one actual suggestion: Make the reader care about the protagonist. Do that by first placing her within her social milieu, thus providing context so the reader understands who she is as a person and likes her and is starting to root for her. Only after you’ve done that can you make the story feel personal to the reader, which you do by making the stakes matter to the protagonist in a personal way.

This is very true, but I definitely consider this all one item, not three items. People just like lists so much and want everything to be a list, but I don’t think it helps to pull this particular idea apart that much. I think it obscures the truth that making the reader care about the protagonist is the key.

Not that there aren’t other ways to tell a story. Making the reader curious will work for some readers, even if the protagonist is unpleasant and the reader doesn’t care about her. This doesn’t work well for me personally, but it can work well for plot-first readers. I would say that those are the two options, though — either get the reader to engage emotionally with the protagonist or make the reader curious, or both. Can anybody think of a book that succeeded without doing either of those things in the opening?

Oh, I might have one more: linguistic style alone seems to be enough for some readers. I’m not sure about that. Maybe it’s the author’s style with the language plus at least one of the other two.

Maybe there’s something else that can also work aside from these three possibilities. Anybody else got a suggestion?

For me, of course, it’s almost always engagement with the protagonist, with curiosity a very (very) distant second choice. For me, style alone may make me read a page or two, with genuine appreciation, but is not likely to be enough to make me read the whole book.

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Telling time in Fantasy Novels

In 2023, the zombie plague changed the world forever.

We haven’t had a lot of rain this month.

Three weeks later, we finally reached the sea.

We’ll meet at two this afternoon, okay?

We can probably make it to the top of the mountain in about five hours.

It took him almost twenty minutes to sneak all the way from the attic to the cellar.

A second later, she realized he’d been joking.

You can’t use any of those time units in your secondary world fantasy unless time is measured in seconds, hours weeks, months, and years, the way we do it in the real world. That’s not a problem if you want your secondary world to feel familiar. It’s a big problem if you don’t. So that always sets up a dilemma: what words do you want to use instead and what will those words imply about the society you’re creating?

There are a small number of time-related words that are generically appropriate. You can use those in (almost) any secondary world and no reader will bat an eye. They don’t imply anything (much) about the world. These are: an instant, a moment, a short time, a long time, dawn, dusk, sunrise, sunset, morning, midmorning, midday, midafternoon, noon, evening, midnight, a day, a season, spring, summer, winter, fall, year.

I have never yet managed to write an entire novel using only these generic terms (I’m pretty sure). But if you pay attention, you’ll find that most of the time, I use these terms heavily and that I never use “second” or “minute” or “week” or any other English-specific word for a time interval unless I’ve decided that that word is okay in whatever world.

Then it gets complicated.

Unless you want all your fantasy worlds and the societies in them to seem similar in important ways, you really ought to come up with society-specific ways to measure time. Different ways for each world, or each society within a world, provided the societies are quite different from each other and one isn’t based on the other or anything like that.

This starts to get creatively demanding. I think I’ve used “glass,” “bell,” and “chime” as time units. In The Floating Islands, I came up with a time unit, the senneri, that is some number of days, longer than a week but shorter than a month. I think I also use “week” and “month” in that world, but in general I try to avoid those units, especially “week.” To me, “month” feels more generic, though I don’t think that objectively is true.

Obviously time units are one of the many, many differences between the society of the Lau and the Ugaro. The Lau have clocks and measure time a lot like we do in the real world. They use all the normal terms for time units that we’re familiar with, although I’m trying to be careful, because “spring” is fine in the winter country or the borderlands, but seasons are different once you move farther south. (Long and short rainy seasons, long and short dry seasons.)

Obviously the Ugaro don’t use clocks and don’t divide time up into minutes, seconds, and hours. They don’t use hourglasses or any other kind of sand timer, and let me say here that I enjoyed giving Suelen a fifteen-second glass. Those must be demanding to make. You may have noticed that Suelen reflects that only surgeons and astronomers track time with that kind of precision. (We may learn a little about astronomers and astrologers in Tasmakat.) I’m sure you’ll also have noticed that Suelen had to carefully explain “minutes” to Tasa in order to track respiration rates for their patients. She might have heard the word, but would not have understood how long a minute is, only that it’s a short period of time.

Bells or chimes obviously wouldn’t make a bit of sense for Ugaro. What time units, and what measurements, I asked myself when I was writing the first book, could the Ugaro possibly use? That’s when I remembered being taught to hold my hand up to the horizon to measure the distance from the horizon to the sun, and estimate time that way. I hope I’ve been consistent in how long a “hand of time” is supposed to be, but probably not very. But it’s simple. A hand of time is about an hour. Try it yourself — hold your hand up in the evening with the sun on top of your index finger and count how many hands it takes to reach the horizon. There you go, that’s about how many hours it is till sunset. A finger is about fifteen minutes. I know I’ve treated that as closer to five minutes at times, and I’m going to declare that the Ugaro use the term “finger of time” for basically anything from five to fifteen minutes, more or less, and “hand of time” for anything from probably forty minutes to an hour and a half. Or so. It’s reasonable that they don’t care about measuring time with any particular precision. You might have noticed that when asked about time, an Ugaro might say, “Six hands of time, eight, ten,” meaning kind of in there someplace.

Distance is exactly the same as time, of course. You can’t use inches, feet, miles, kilometers, centimeters, furlongs, anything like that unless you want to imply something about your society. That’s why the Lau say “miles” and the Ugaro say “bowshots.” How long IS a bowshot? Obviously that varies by how powerful the bow is. An Ugaro can pull a pretty heavy bow and I bet the warriors not only compete in distance shooting, but exaggerate a bit on top of that. In the real world, a bowshot could be as much as 200 yards or more, closer to 300 yards when you start talking about distance records. The Ugaro consider a bowshot anything from 200 to 400 yards, or so, which means that you can say that four or to six bowshots is a mile.

For shorter distances, the Lau say “inches” or “feet” and the Ugaro say “spearlength” or bowlength” or “handbreadth” or whatever.

Rather than simplifying time and distance units to imply a less technological and less time-oriented society, you can perfectly well come up with super-ornate time measurement. That can do great things for your worldbuiding in a different way. In their Rook and Rose series, Marie Brennan and Alyc Helms have designed an ornate city that sort of resembles Venice, but is quite different. There are the two different magic systems, both complicated, and on top of that, the hours of days are counted according to a complicated system that I certainly have not figured out. (I haven’t tried, to be fair).

The hours passed with excruciating slowness. Second earth. Third earth. Fourth.

“Let’s meet at the foot of the Lacewater Bridge in Suncross. Is second earth too early?”

The charts have been drawn and the alignments read. With the blessings of Celnis, the year is set as 211. With the blessings of Esclus, the month is Colbrilun. With the blessings of Thrunium, the date is the third day of the third iteration. With the blessings of Sacretha, the day is Andusny. With the blessings of Civrus and Pavlus, the hour is second earth. Within this alignment, may all the glory of the cosmos be channeled …

In that world, we have sun hours and earth hours, among all these ornate names for the days of the week and whatever iterations might be. Notice that “month” and “years” are normal words; I guess Brennan and Helms agree with me that those terms sound generic compared to other words related to time. Regardless, this is yet another layer of cool worldbuilding on top of the different magic systems and the history of the city and so on. I should go back to this series and read the second book, but I bet I don’t touch very much fiction of any kind until I’m finishing up the draft of Tasmakat. I never read much fiction when I’m seriously involved with something of my own.

I wish I’d thought of sun hours and earth hours for the Lau, but alas, I didn’t. I guess I could let the Lakasha-erra use those terms, though they have two Suns and that must be complicated. In fact, that’s what I’m going to have to do — think about how they tell time given that essential astrological truth of their country and how that differs from how the Lau tell time. They can’t use the same measurements — their days especially have to be different. Well, that’s a detail that’s going to be fun, but I don’t have to think about it yet — it’s going to be a while till I send anybody into the country of two Suns!

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Eight Weeks! How Time Flies!

Leda has started to enjoy her puppies much more now that they are pestering her so much less about nursing. Her favorite puppy seems to be Boy 1. Mothers do often seem to have favorites. In this case I think Leda may be influenced by the others, especially Boy 3, being more determined to nurse; Boy 1 is a lot less pestiferous about that. So is Boy 4, but he loves Boy 3 and follows him around and plays with him a lot. It’s quite delightful that Boy 3 lets Boy 4 beat him up. He’s 12 oz bigger and definitely being a nice playmate on purpose. Dogs do learn that — this is the exact time they learn that, just this way. They want to play and they learn that if they are nice, other puppies will play with them instead of running away. So then the stronger ones learn to be nice. Or that’s how it ought to work, and how it has plainly worked in this case. Cavaliers learn to be gentle easily, of course; one of the many nice things about this breed.

I vacuumed after this picture was taken, by the way. Blue is a stupid color for a carpet if you have white dogs, I know that, don’t bother pointing it out. I like blue. Also, it does look nice whenever I happen to have vacuumed less than an hour previously.

The puppies have come along tremendously in the past week. They are all exploring much farther and running around much more independently of the crowd. This is when it becomes very important to teach them to come when called. Otherwise you stand there in the yard at dusk calling Puppy Puppy Puppy! and wondering if one of them managed to squirm out under the fence or whether some other dire thing has happened. My fence is secure, but it’s foolish to take total security for granted, plus one or two episodes in the past have left me phobic about dogs getting lost — anyone who leaves the gate open at someone else’s house should be whipped through the streets, let me add — and the basic fact is that I’m phobic and I do not want to have to worry. Hence teaching them to come. You know who is most treat-focused?

Boy 2 is SO into treats, wow, he ZOOMS to me and then sits and looks just like this while the other puppies are bumbling around wondering if treats might fall from the sky. Boy 2 knows darn well where the treats are coming from. He is trying as hard as he can to figure out how to get me to give them to him, preferably all the treats all the time as fast as possible. He is going to be SO easy to train! Treat-focused dogs are wonderful that way.

Boy Four demonstrates how to crate train the easy way: put a crate in the living room, leave the door open, and there you go. A crate is not quite as attractive to a puppy is a box is to a cat, but it’s very attractive, that’s for sure. Every puppy will go into this crate and fall asleep. They like the enormous dog bed too. I keep having to collect sleeping puppies so I can tuck them into the puppy room and forget about them for a few hours as I get work done. They’re staying awake a LOT longer, I will add, so they’re pretty distracting. Even so, I’m sorry I’ll be losing most of them this week!

Oh, I will add, yes, I’m getting work done! So far Tasmakat is just as easy as every other Tuyo-world book. (Knock on wood!) I love it. It’s so much easier than forcing my way through what turned out to be the last third of Invictus, though I do like that one a lot and of course it did get easier right at the end. But everything in the Tuyo world is just a different level of fun for me, with intense flow that kicks on easily and is painful to interrupt. I took the adult dogs out for a run this morning because the weather was so nice, and it was so hard to turn off the laptop! Yay for today being a vacation so I can go back to Tasmakat in just a few minutes, after I post this!

I have a hundred seventy pages, by the way. I’d previously written the very beginning and about fifty pages onward, and then I leaped ahead and wrote a scene that occurs in, I don’t know, the middle part of the first third of the story, I guess, more or less. Plus a few scattered fragments here and there. I wrote the bit where Esau turns up. I think that will remain in the finished draft, but no promises. But I think so.

Anyway, now I’m going back and writing the part in between the very beginning and this other part that happens later.

My best estimate (it’s too early to make estimates, but whatever) is that it will take me 300 pages to get to the capital city of Avaras, then probably a hundred pages to have one or two intense scenes there — wow, Soretes is going to be SO upset with Aras, for many excellent reasons — and get out of Avaras and into the country with two Suns. Then the REAL problem will emerge and it will become clear why Tasmakat-an is so important to this story that she gets to be the title character. I hope you all find the REAL problem surprising — except Craig, who knows all about it because he helped me brainstorm about some of the things that are going to happen. The rest of the book will take place in the country of sand, the country of fire, the land of the Sun and the Son, the land of two Suns. Lots of names! The Lakasha-erra call it by a name that translates roughly to The Noble Land of Beautiful Gardens, which tells you a lot about it and something about them. Think of the Sahara, but with with many large oases strung through it.

Yes, we are also going to meet the rulers of the country of sand — the Ro-Antalet, the lions with the heads of men. They’re very impressive. Among other things, they’re capable of making an Ugaro warrior far more tolerant of heat than anything non-magical could possibly justify.

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How much Detail is Too Much?

So, Suelen:

If you’ve read it already, what did you think about the level of medical detail? This story was fun to research — I did a TON of research, in case you wondered, mostly focusing on medical practices in Classical Rome and Greece. Of course this kind of research leads to the desire to share all the cool details with the reader, a desire that should be reined in. On the other hand, a protagonist who is thoroughly focused on his specialty is going to think about his work A LOT, and should be allowed to do so. I very specifically asked beta readers whether I’d put in too much detail, and they all said no, the medical stuff was good, they liked it. I thought I’d be cutting a painful amount about wound treatment, but no, I wound up only cutting a tiny bit.

The line I had in mind while writing my protagonist is actually from The Beacon at Alexandria by Gillian Bradshaw, in which an important secondary character says of the protagonist something like, “I tried to bribe him, but it was hopeless. He doesn’t want anything but books about medicine and he’s got plenty of those. As far as I can tell, he spends all his time talking about medicine and thinking about medicine, and at night he probably dreams about medicine.” That’s definitely Suelen. He probably does dream about medicine.

The above is not an exact quote, by the way, because I don’t have the book handy, but it’s fairly close. The Beacon at Alexandria, as you may know, is about a young woman who disguises herself as a eunuch so that she can study medicine in Alexandria. This is in the period when the Roman Empire is going to hit a rough patch and start its final decline, but this story isn’t about that, fortunately. It’s about Charis and about medicine, and because the story is by Bradshaw, it’s got a strong romantic element, though that’s not nearly as important an element as Classical medicine. So guess what book I picked up to look at medicine as it was actually practiced at the time? Yep, I had this novel on my coffee table while writing Suelen. Along with stuff I printed out about the history of sutures and antiseptics and wound care, plus anatomical diagrams of the knee from every angle.

I don’t think Beacon is available as an ebook, but even if you thoroughly prefer ebooks, as I do, it’s well worth picking up in paper. A great novel, one of my favorites by Bradshaw, who is my favorite author of historicals. I’ve read it many times.

I was also influenced a little bit by another of Bradshaw’s books, The Sand-Reckoner, in which the protagonist is Archimedes. He’ll drift away from practical life into the contemplation of mathematics, and also we also see a lot of detail about how to design and build catapults. Too much detail? No, not at all! Bradshaw is such a good writer, she really is, and part of that is knowing how much detail to put into her stories. This is another of my favorites of hers.

If you like novels with a medical emphasis, by the way, one that is far less well known than it should be is Nick O’Donohoe’s novel The Magic and the Healing, about a veterinary student who finds herself on a rotation caring for mythological creatures, centaurs and unicorns and of course who could forget the amazing griffin, probably my favorite griffin in all of fantasy literature. What a great book this is. I’m biased because (a) the griffin, and (b) I like medical stuff very much, and (c) this is the single novel that clarified for me how to write a character who is intelligent and perceptive. I mean, as opposed to the author just declaring the character is intelligent and perceptive. BJ really is, and this is indicated without the author making any assertions or being at all heavy-handed about it. I think O’Donohoe was an important influence on me when it comes to this kind of characterization.

Camille, if you read this post, you REALLY should read that novel if you like fantasy AT ALL. When I loaned it to her many years ago, my own veterinarian loved it and said O’Donohoe handled the medical details — of which there are many, it’s that kind of story — just right.

Oh, and nobody should be put off by the cover, which is currently hideous.

Only a radiologist could like that cover. The original cover was much more appealing.

Anyway, I hope you all enjoy the level of detail in Suelen, though of course I’m sure opinions will vary and that’s fine. I personally enjoy lots of detail if the protagonist is an expert in anything — medicine, martial arts, opera, forensic anthropology, mechanical engineering, doesn’t matter, if the protagonist is an expert, I’m almost certain to enjoy reading about details of that specialty, even if I’m not inherently that interested in mechanical engineering or don’t know anything much about opera.

If anybody’s got a book they enjoy that fits this category — expert protagonist, lots of details about the area of expertise — by all means drop that in the comments!

And if you’ve reviewed Suelen (or any of my books), thank you! Now that Amazon allows ratings without reviews, I see that only about 15% of people who rate a book leave even a very short review. While ratings are nice, particularly positive ratings, reviews influence Amazon algorithms more strongly and can make all the difference when running a promotion. I appreciate it very much when someone takes the time to write a review.

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Sale: Tuyo series

I’m sure most of you know this, but as always when a new book is released, a sale is now running for the earlier books in the series. If you haven’t yet tried this series, now is the time to pick up every book!

I may run another sale toward the end of this year, but I am unlikely to take promotion as seriously again until Tasmakat comes out, which will (barring acts of God) be in 2023 sometime.

Tuyo is free for the next few days, Nikoles discounted to $0.99, and Tarashana and Keraunani are most heavily discounted right now — their prices will rise in increments until they’re back at the pre-sale price.

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Out today!

I’m sure most of you know this, but Suelen is out today!

I certainly hope you enjoy it. I did.

Also, though the ramifications of this story do not become visible in Tarashana, they do in Tasmakat. Just this morning, I was working on a scene that would have been impossible if the events in Suelen had not occurred two years earlier.

Those of you who preordered this book, thank you! Preorders paid for the cover AND for a good portion of the promotion I’m running on Tuyo over the next week.

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Naming Puppies is almost as Difficult as Choosing Titles for Books

Hmm, what should his name be?

I’m not thinking about the call names. The new owners can call their puppies whatever they like, of course. I’m talking about the registered names. Just as my Pippa’s name was actually Sevenwoods Epiphany, or Dora was Anara Adornment, these puppies need registered names. AND the name has to start with P or at least have an important P in the name somewhere, because this is my P litter. For example, Ishmael is actually Anara Call Me Ishmael.

Alphabetical names are useful for keeping track of which puppy is which. For example, someone contacted me yesterday asking if I’d ever had a puppy with chronic allergies. I said yes, one of the E puppies developed (mild) allergies as a young adult and I placed her as a pet because of that and added that she’s thirteen now and was Dora’s niece and not related to my current dogs. And how do I remember all that? Because I know which litter was named with E and how long ago they were born and who their mother was and how they’re connected to my other dogs. I remember my puppies quite well, and the alphabetical names are one reason they’re easy to keep sorted out in my head.

So, P. That’s not the easiest letter of the alphabet, though I can think of worse. Registered names need to be polysyllabic and sound good with “Anara” in front of them. Multiple words are just fine, but single words can work if they’re long enough.

The puppies are starting to acquire personalities, though my first impressions may still turn out to be mistaken in some cases, plus this is complicated because two of the puppies clicked into a fear period this morning, which has to be discounted when thinking about their actual personalities.

The first fear period, incidentally, usually occurs (if it’s going to occur at all) around eight to ten weeks of age — just in time for first vaccinations and re-homing, which is not great. It’s nice to put off potentially traumatic experiences until the puppy comes out of the fear period, or else make those experiences as non-traumatic as possible. With Cavaliers, many don’t have a perceptible fear period, but others do. It’s easy to identify because suddenly puppies that have entered a fear period run to the back of the puppy room when the vacuum cleaner comes into sight. This morning, for the first time two puppy ran away from the vacuum cleaner, and the other two just picked up their heads for a second and then continued to sleep at the front of the room, so that was quite clear. My way of dealing with vacuum cleaner fear is to add a couple of adult dogs to the puppy room and then vacuum slowly in front of the gate so that the fearful puppies can see the adults be totally, one hundred percent unimpressed by vacuum cleaners. (I literally have to turn off the vacuum cleaner and nudge the adults to make them move out of the way.) (They also go to sleep when being blow-dried.)

Then later this morning, one of those suddenly-fearful puppies reacted fearfully to a neighbor shoveling gravel out of a bin. (Shovel through gravel = loud, weird noise). My way of dealing with that was to immediately get a lot of little treats and teach all the puppies to come to me when I call them, about twenty feet from the neighbor with the gravel. That rapidly persuaded the fearful puppy that there was nothing to be afraid of.

This is how you handle a puppy that has entered a fear period: provide good things and reduce the importance of the scary thing; don’t force the puppy to go nearer to the scary thing than he’s willing to go; let him set acceptable distance while you are cheerful and offer many nice distractions). Puppies will come out of a fear period in a couple of weeks, no harm done as long as you’re careful. Do try not to step on a puppy during the fear period, as that may make them leery of feet forever. That happened with my first Papillon.

But back to P names!

Puppy 1: Affectionate, sociable, happy, middle-of-the-road, fairly average Cavalier personality. (This is why I like Cavaliers, because normal puppies are like this.) Hasn’t hit the fear period (yet, at least). I’m thinking of naming this puppy Anara Afternoon in Paris. I like multiple-word names if I can think of a good one.

Puppy 2: Similar to 1, affectionate, sociable, perhaps more thoughtful, tends to explore a bit farther than 1, a touch bolder and more independent — but also currently in a fear period. He is a quiet puppy. When he is fearful, he is quiet. Because he sometimes strikes me as thoughtful — the kind who looks carefully at things and you can see the wheels in his tiny brain turning — I’m inclined to name him Anara Pericles. I like the name Pericles, and Greek names sound classy.

Puppy 3: All the pizzazz, personality plus, very very happy and sociable. Interestingly, this is the other one of the puppies who has hit an obvious fear period. When he is fearful, he tells you about it. Interesting how some puppies are talkers and some aren’t. Bbecause of all the zip, I’m going to name this puppy Anara Pandemonium. I suspect he will live up to it. I’m sure he would be a fantastic tricks dog and a great therapy dog.

Puppy 4: He’s toughened up a good bit and will stand up for himself rather than letting the bigger ones push him around, but he’s very into humans. He’s a kisser and a talker and he likes to be babied. At seven weeks and three days, he still likes to be fed by hand! Well, that’s a good way of encouraging the emotional bond to humans, so sure, that’s fine. He can learn to eat better out of a dish next week. Not a trace of a fear period (so far). I’m very attached to this little guy. I’m thinking of Anara Personable.

Other possibilities: Particular, Presentation, Phenomenal. Or perhaps Phineas or Perseus, though those are a little short. For a black puppy, I would have thought of Phantom of the Opera, a great name! But for a Blenheim puppy, I guess not. What do you all think of this set of names? Do you like any of these a lot better than the ones I’ve tentatively picked out of the universe of P words and names?

Anything else occur to anybody? I can’t fill out the CKCSC registration paperwork without names, so I need to decide soon and get the slooooow wheels of CKCSC registration turning. AKC is much faster. CKCSC can take a year or so to finally work through the registration process.

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