Worldcon reDux

Well, I'm home again. I guess you could say that the convention went well. I spoke to my agent who tells me that the novels are selling well across the series, which is unusual. Most of the recent royalties (e-book) were for the God Stalker Chronicles, which leads me to hope that I'm picking up some new readers. Also I saw many fans and had well attended panels. The two that I moderated went pretty well, although in the "Strong Female Character" one nobody wanted to talk about the difference between a strong female and a strong male character. That panel would probably work better at Wiscon. I got run over in the other two panels by more talkative panelists. I'm just not good at making myself speak up. Anyway, thanks to all for the reading lists and comments, which really helped.

While I was there, a friend gave the complete ms (so far) for the next novel its first read-through. She says it hangs together well, except that I don't introduce the Southern Host until Chapter 6. It's a fair cop. Now I'm writing a new first chapter from the Knorth randons' point of view when Jame first arrives, and it suddenly occurred to me that the only Knorth randon at Tentir during Jame's year there was Harn, who doesn't gossip. So the Knorth with the Southern Host have only heard about Jame second or third hand. That should be fun to play with. I need a name for the randon in charge of the Knorth barracks at Kothifir. She's short (for a Kendar) with white, close-cropped hair and almost a complete lack of affect. No one can tell what she's thinking, least of all Jame. She needs a given first name and an earned last name, e.g. Jamethiel Priest's-bane. Any ideas?

On the home front, bad news about Countess: she's developing cataracts in both eyes. The only solution seems to be to send her off to Michigan for really expensive surgery that will only partly correct the problem. So far, she seems unaffected otherwise and is in no pain. I need to think about this.