Adam
asked
Lois McMaster Bujold:
Hi. Thank you for the many many hours of entertainment you've provided me over the last 20 years! I'm thouroughly enjoying the penric stories now. I noticed that unlike the first 3 penric stories, the 4th one (which I'm still reading) happens just after the 3rd one. Just curious, is there a plan to continue in that way, or did that just happen for this story that wasn't finished at the end of book 3?
Lois McMaster Bujold
Glad you are enjoying Pen & Des! So am I, thus far.
Part of my, hm, not plan but hope for the Penric tales is to keep the series structure as loose as possible. (Think how, say, the original Sherlock Holmes stories work by accumulation while stitching back and forth in the characters' lives, although they have the card-up-the-sleeve of Watson's after-the-fact narration.) I'd like to be able to jump around in Pen's timeline at will, although my prior experience does show if one jumps too far forward too fast it tends to block off sectors for development, so there are some limits on that score. But not nearly as many as with more rigid sequential-chronological structures. See The Sharing Knife tetralogy for a worked example at the opposite end of the spectrum.
I do plan/hope to do more with Pen in Cedonia, but those ideas aren't quite ripe yet.
Ta, L.
Glad you are enjoying Pen & Des! So am I, thus far.
Part of my, hm, not plan but hope for the Penric tales is to keep the series structure as loose as possible. (Think how, say, the original Sherlock Holmes stories work by accumulation while stitching back and forth in the characters' lives, although they have the card-up-the-sleeve of Watson's after-the-fact narration.) I'd like to be able to jump around in Pen's timeline at will, although my prior experience does show if one jumps too far forward too fast it tends to block off sectors for development, so there are some limits on that score. But not nearly as many as with more rigid sequential-chronological structures. See The Sharing Knife tetralogy for a worked example at the opposite end of the spectrum.
I do plan/hope to do more with Pen in Cedonia, but those ideas aren't quite ripe yet.
Ta, L.
More Answered Questions
Svetoslav
asked
Lois McMaster Bujold:
I just bought the three Penric novellas and I cannot wait to return to that strange upside-down medieval Europe! Do we have maps for the locations or at least some background info about the places/events from history that inspired the world-building for the novellas?
Laura
asked
Lois McMaster Bujold:
I love libraries and book stores. However, when I browse rows upon rows of books I often doubt if my own writing will contribute or amount to much, especially when weighed against the great investment required of my very finite time. Did you ever face similar doubts? If so, how did you reason/wrestle with them?
Talli Ruksas
asked
Lois McMaster Bujold:
Did any of the Vorkosigans participate in Gregor's second ceremony on Komarr?
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