KIRITH
Jmeadows writes:
Are you happy? I think you’ve just made a zillion fans
A zillion? Ooooooh.
faint off their desk chairs. They’re going to come clawing back up to their keyboards either very happy, or very desperate for more… Probably both.I did not faint. I already know you’re tricky like this
Oh, you mods. I can’t get away with anything with my mods.
Melissa Mead writes:
:Thud. Scrabble, scrabble, claw:
I hope no permanent damage was done to either you or the furnishings. Or possibly any small furry animals passing at the time.
Abigailmm
Oh! Oh! Please tell us this has a future . . . If you were just going to tuck it away again you didn’t have to be so mean as to let out just that teeny little snippet. We’ll come steal your roses and picket your bell-tower if you vanish it again.
Whereupon I would become so demoralised I couldn’t write.
kfoster
Book tease!
Well, yes.
librarykat
You know this kind of thing only makes us want MORE.
Oh, I hope so!
skating librarian
What a lovely treat. I too am eager to hear whether you are merely going to torture us with a snippet or whether, since it saw fit to creep back into view you’ll put it in line for its chance to gladden the hearts of your fans.
I’m going to torture you with more snippets.
Judith
That’s not the same story that I remember from your reading of three “Damar” chapters at Balticon 1990, so that means there are at least two of them out there. Perhaps the one you read was the “second” one to which you refer.
The two (or three) post KIRITH Third Damar novels are all from since I moved over here, so later than that Balticon. (Are you sure it was 1990? I thought it was earlier.) The only other thing I can think of that I’d yanked into sufficient coherence to be reading aloud from has our heroine waking up in bed having survived the avalanche that killed her lover, and trying to decide what she’s going to do with her life. She takes a job as kitchen help at the monastery that illuminates the books of magic . . . but that’s not Damar.
Or the ghost story. But I don’t think I ever read from that one.
Not to be greedy or anything (yeah, right), but any chance you could post the first three chapters of the OTHER one, seeing as to how (love that grammatical expression) you’ve already read them at a con?
Tell me what they’re about and I’ll tell you if you’re remembering another life and another author reading another book. And three chapters the way I delineate chapters is a LOT, so the short answer is no, I won’t, because I think that starts getting into violating my own copyright which is, you know, dumb. What I’ve given you of KIRITH is the first 1000 or so words.
It’s been a long time since I visited that world. I’d LOVE to go back.
Ahem. SWORD and HERO haven’t disappeared, you know. You mean you want a new adventure in that world. But this is one of those things I keep trying to tell everyone who loves SWORD and HERO–and I know I’ve said it in the FAQ on my web site, and I’m pretty sure I’ve said it here on the blog–there is no going back. Even if I do manage to write another Damar novel–and at this point, curiously, I think I probably will: I spent quite a few years very sure I would not–it will not be a SWORD or a HERO. Those books were written by a young woman who still believed in fairy tales and happy endings that more or less stayed happy. I’m a lot older and bleaker. If the Story Council sent me a SWORD II now I wouldn’t know what to do with it. * I am now the person who wrote SUNSHINE’s and DRAGONHAVEN’s worlds, remember. I’ve told you, haven’t I, that there’s a short story ( . . . well, I think it’s a short story, but you regular readers know me and short stories . . . ) about what happens to Aerin after Tor dies (of old age, by the way) and she has the opportunity to go back to Luthe? It is not a cheerful story.**
I don’t know how much of my sudden access of blight and bleakery had to do with the flap surrounding having won a Newbery Honor followed immediately by the Newbery Medal for the first two Damar books, which flap landed on my soft squishy bits like a buzzard on a rabbit, but it’s already showing in KIRITH. Which is one of KIRITH’s problems: it’s morbid.
Zille
I think your mischievousness must be getting away with you! Because you are going to get all your fans (including me, I must admit) into a serious tizzy with this! You, more than anyone else, must know how crazed we all are for a new Damar novel!
Well, yes, but see above. The next Damar novel everyone wants is not going to happen. The next Damar novel will be something else. The likeliest Third Damar Novel is BELLS OF MAZAHAN because there’s a lot of it already written. I certainly want to get around to Untitled Third Third Damar Novel because it’s got another particularly wonderful horse in it and a life-or-death race across the desert with the bad guys in hot pursuit. That one actually sounds a lot like the third one that should have come after SWORD and HERO twenty years ago, if SWORD and HERO had been quietly overlooked by the Newbery committees and I could have kept writing without having all my neuroses cauterised by fame. But that doesn’t work either, because if SWORD and HERO hadn’t won stuff that made a lot of people buy them I might still have a day job and not got it written.
We’ll all just have to do the best we can with what we’ve got.
Blackbear
| abigailmm wrote on Thu, 05 March 2009 18:52 |
| If you were just going to tuck it away again you didn’t have to be so mean as to let out just that teeny little snippet. |
She’s TOTALLY that mean
Yep. Sure am. You want to check out just how truly awful I am, ask a mod.
Jeanne Marie
I actually, just barely two weeks ago, decided to sensibly delete before posting the suggestion that you ask Blogmom to help you e-publish the Third Damar novel as another arm/tentacle of the blog (fearing that things would be thrown violently from the screen towards my head)…and here you are VALIDATING my idea! I’m amazed that these brain waves can cross oceans like that!
Wait: think this through, please. Why would I want to do that? Well, okay, some people like the idea of epublishing their own work. Not me. I don’t like the real world. I particularly don’t like the real world of business. Including the virtual real world of business. Keep track of orders and so on? Brrrrr. I can barely get Klutzim Klub memberships sent out. And my taxes are quite nightmare enough without adding self-publishing to the devilish pot au feu. KIRITH got turned down by the publisher who’d produced SWORD and HERO because it wasn’t good enough. I haven’t reread it since so I don’t know how salvageable it is. There’s some stuff in it I know I’d like to find a home for somewhere. Possibly on the blog if it’s more holes than fabric.
Blondviolinist
Ack!!!! This is what I get for coming home late tonight! I cannot do my jubilant Robin-Found-The-First-Third-Damar-Novel-And-Let-Us-Peek!! dance, because my downstairs neighbors would not understand the thumpings from upstairs.
Robin, you do realize that I am now (guiltily) hoping that the cost for the Third House renovation goes up even more? Because then you would have to find a way to get the First Third novel out of whatever unspeakable mess it was in and get it ready for publication.
Yes, but again, see above. The mess it was in is the mess that I wrote. I’d need to sit down and run it through the typewriter again, as we used to say in the old days–and it may not be salvageable. Third House cost going even farther up will only make me cry.
…I would apologize for being so evil, but since you admit to being an evil cow, I think I shall withhold apologies
Oh, definitely no apologies necessary! Honour among evil cows!
Reading Angel
Oh, GOSH, Robin! That was hardly nice! I object!(but thanks!) I’d object less if this were one of the ones on its way to being published, though…
Would you rather not see parts of stories that may never see the official light of published print? I’m genuinely curious. Part of the point of posting some of KIRITH is so that it’s not entirely wasted if I can’t face rewriting it. This blog is a year and a half old and I’m still wondering what I can do with it . . . and it’s also a frelling lot of work, since I’m still insisting on posting daily***, and I like the idea of having as many choices as possible for those daily entries. Story snippets seems to me like a good one to add to the inventory.
Now I’m aching for more and there’s nothing sweet in the house to take off the edge of the book-craving; we’re out of chocolate and there is no ice cream and there’s no bread to put the honey on…
Bread? What do you need bread for? You eat the honey out of the JAR.
Diane in MN
Thanks for the intro to Chapter One . . . three hundred pages, eh? What a lot of material you have for nights when it’s too late to write a blog entry!
Well . . . the first twenty pages or so anyway. I’m certainly going to post to the end of the first chapter ( . . . eventually), when our hero meets our heroine. I may give you through the second chapter, when he meets her again many years later. But I’ll have Merrilee all over me like a hellhound watching me put my shoes on† long before, I imagine, telling me to rewrite the thing so she can sell it.
. . . and are you now wondering why you would have stashed a big pile of manuscript in with a lot of unwanted electronic paraphernalia?)
Sadly . . . no. It’s like why my latest raid on the newsagent’s for Green & Black’s ended up on the CD shelf, and why the bags of dog food tend to be found in the kindling basket. It’s called Middle Aged Brain in a Very Small House.
Sunday morning
Oh no. Now I want more. You’re like a drug!!
Ooooh! Thanks ever so!
Hmmm….a main character whose name doesn’t begin with an “A”…. Now I’ll have to order a different set of monogram towels.
Harry would say that towels with ‘A’s on them had nothing to do with her.
Kathy S
What worries me now is the title of this thread, as it’s what my parents used to cut us off without more story.
| Quote: |
| (I’ll tell you the story of the three holes in the ground. Well, well, well.) |
Golly. They’re even meaner than I am. Do they have horns or long pointy teeth?
briton86
Do we get chapter 2 tomorrow? *imagine big puppy-dog eyes*
You’ll get the next 1000 words . . . some time or other. And the next thousand after that . . . some other time or other. And . . .
Maren
| Jeanne Marie wrote on Thu, 05 March 2009 23:39 |
| I actually, just barely two weeks ago, decided to sensibly delete before posting the suggestion that you ask Blogmom to help you e-publish the Third Damar novel as another arm/tentacle of the blog |
–I thought of this too, but then I realized Robin’s contract with her current publisher probably prevents it. Yes?
Well, when Merrilee climbs all over me like a hellhound watching me putting my shoes on, I’ll ask her where the boundaries run. Roughly speaking, yes. I have to offer my current publishers first chance at anything I write that they might want. So if it’s good enough to hang for the public to read, it’s good enough that I should be giving it to them instead. If it’s not good enough to hang for the public to read . . . I’m not going to hang it. You see the problem.
Anyway, YAAAAYYYY and thank you for the Kirith-snippet.
You’re welcome!
vikkik
JENNIFER ROBIN CAROLYN MCKINLEY DICKINSON!!!!!!!!!
Ooooh! Very good! Jennifer Carolyn Robin, however.
(Hope I got them in the right order there…) Now you’re being a TEASE!!!!
Well, yes. That was the idea. I have to have some fun too, you know.
*tries to look stern*
*fails*
*hopes desperately that the rest of this will somehow see the light of day soon*
*pokes Robin’s publishers*
Unfortunately, it’s me you have to poke. I’m the one has to rewrite the freller so a publisher would want it, and my readers would want to read it.
LRK
It’s so wonderful that you found it!
And of course – the question does present itself – what do you intend to do with it now you’ve found it?
A Very Good Question. Stay Tuned.
* * *
* Stroke it, take it for walks, feed it roast chicken?
** All right, I confess, I do want to write Jack Dedham’s love story. He gets it on with Mathin’s daughter, have I told you this?^ She teaches him to ride the Hill horses. I’ve had a crush on Jack Dedham for over a quarter of a century.
^ It’s a short story.
*** Note that this is not necessarily as mad as it looks. Regular readers know what my life is like. If I blog every day, like walking hellhounds, it gets done. If it goes on The List with sweeping the floor and reading the new translation of WAR AND PEACE . . . well. I have started telling myself that as soon as I feel really secure about the fact that I am now a blogger, I’ll lighten up a little. I only ring bells three or four times a week. Or five. At the moment I’m wondering if holding myself to this virtual grindstone is any part of why I’m about to have a third book out in three years (okay, Peter wrote half of it), and am not yet failing to get PEGASUS in in time for 2010.^ Maybe I just like pain.
^ Frantic beating on all at-hand wooden objects, including head of self.
† Why don’t they learn that this is totally counterproductive? Yaay! She’s putting her shoes on! She’s going to TAKE US FOR A WALK! Let’s THROW OURSELVES INTO HER LAP so she can’t REACH her feet!
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