P.C. Hodgell's Blog, page 23

Proofs

Some great typo catches so far and two real mistakes. I've finished my reading but will hold off sending in the corrections until this afternoon in case anyone spots anything else.

tagmeth @ 2009-12-14T20:06:00

Looks like the first 5 chapters of Bound in Blood are
available, as is the ARC, on Baen's web site.


I'm in the precess of proof-reading the galleys. So far there aren't any major problems.

Also, Maureen had located the Russian covers to (I think) God Stalk and Dark of the Moon. They don't look a great deal like Jame, but I enjoy their complexity.

Ice and short-fuse horses

Hmm. I may not use as much of the fish lore as I expected, but elements of it are certainly there. One has to know the truth before one can twist it. I wonder if most readers realize how much research goes into fantasy. I can't be unique in that respect. If nothing else, the real world is incredibly full of incredible facts. You never realize how little you know until you start to write fantasy. Now I've got my characters falling through turbulent spring ice straight into the jaws of t...

Here, fishie, fishie, fishie ...

By coincidence, I was reading M. C. Beaton's Death of a Gossip which has a Scottish salmon fly fishing academy as its setting and came across this quote: "...he gamely went on with his lecture, showing slides of what salmon looked like when they headed up river from the sea, when they were spawning, and when they were returning to the sea." Go figure.

And yet more fishies

How about this? Most salmon die after spawning, males in particular. Some females survive and are venerated as the mothers of the school (right word?). When these are caught, they are examined and released. Males are almost always animated solely by their infestations, ie zombie fish. They would be easy to spot.

Oh, I like that. See what happens when I ask questions?

More Fishies

I've had two comments on the spawn-and-die response of salmon. As far as I can make out, that's true of Pacific salmon but not of Atlantic ones. Is the latter info wrong?

Pip and Fishy Matters

Hurrah, I'm back to riding Pip. So far, he hasn't tried to buck me off. In a solo lesson with Marc, I think I finally learned how to hold Pip's mouth, which is to say firmly but without hanging on it. It's a delicate balance between giving him courage and not checking him. I've always been too soft with him, afraid to hurt. Marc has told me that over and over, but it's a different matter sensing it for oneself. God, I hated feeling like a coward.

Knock on wood that it lasts.

Meanwhile, I'...

Windycon et al.

Just back from Windycon, where the theme this year was steam-punk. I wanted to post a photo of me in my corset, but LJ apparently doesn't accept RTF (sp?) format. Well, it was pretty modest compared to some that I saw. Some people probably shouldn't wear corsets with nothing on underneath. As for short dresses with fishnet stockings and no discernible underwear.... There were some wonderful costumes, though, including one lady in a wheelchair with faux gas lighting and a gentleman wearin...

Tori, Jame, and Kothifir

So far, most people seem to favor a story alternating between Tori's past and Jame's present in Kothifir. I'll have to do some hard thinking about that. Perhaps we already know the relevant details about Tori's time with the Southern Host, except for Genjar's role in the massacre. And Tori missed a lot that was actually going on at Urakarn when he was a prisoner there. We also don't know his reaction to all of these events.

One problem with showing a younger Tori is that he will be less ...

More proofs

Whew. I just finished a marathon reading of the galley proofs for the paperback version of God Stalker Chronicles. I guess they want me to vet every single edition. Yes, I know I could have asked for help as I have before, but I really did need to re-read these books. I was struck by how different Dark of the Moon is from God Stalk, and not just because it alternates between Jame and Tori. How to say this: God Stalk went for easy hits regarding personalities. It's certainly much more f...