Light the candle, infuse the tea, put the bolly on ice

If you've followed this blog at all, you'll know what a dragged out process finishing a book is. The mss ping pongs back through various stages of editing, which ranges from story, to chapter, to paragraph, to sentence, to word and then grammar. And everything in between.

But I think Shield wall is about at the end of this process. I had a few things my editor wanted me to look at, and then I had things I wanted to look at, and I procrastinated until today, because I wanted to have a day with nothing else to do but lock myself into a room with the world and the characters, and just hang out with them, in a literary kind of way.

It went well. I was spell-checking by 3pm, and had a chance to take a long walk and see if anything else came to me.

There's a niggling reluctance now, to send it in. But it's time really, and so here goes.

Somewhere, almost out of hearing, a long slow drum roll begins.....

Larboard and Curry

Working through the last notes, I came upon a couple of interesting etymological conundrums.

The first is the word 'curry' which I have used to describe richly spiced stews. I used this word because the earliest English cook book is named 'A Form of Cury' ( written by the cook of Henry II, in AD.1390 and includes hares in talbotes and capons in coney) which delighted me, because it seemed that 'curry' had a history and etymology long before our contact with India and tumeric and vindaloo. It also seemed to reinforce the idea that medieval English cookery was much closer to the spiced food of the middle east, than our more modern cuisine.

But strangely enough, a check with the Anglo-Indian Dictionary named Hobson-Jobson, curry does indeed come from a Tami word,
kari, which meant sauce. And a check with the Oxford English Dictionary, shows that 'Cury', from a 'Forme of Cury', comes from a middle french word, the predecessor of the word cuisine. Ah well!

Another interesting one was the word 'port' for the left side of a boat, which dates from only 1855, when it was officially adopted by the British Navy. The previous word was the middle english, 'larboard' - which was the 'ladde board'. Ie the side where the gangplank went, with ladde related to the verb laden, 'to load'.

The Old English was bæcboard. Though why the backboard, as opposed to 'steorboard/starboard' I'm not sure.

October 4th, 2010

Our air con packed up half way through the night, and we threw the windows open and found that autumn had come, overnight, to Hong Kong.

There was a cool breeze, an indistinct sunrise, through drifting clouds, and a scent of smoke on the air. And - of course with autumn - a sense of passing.

Obviously, for our family, is the departure of our nanny, Rowena who is returning to the Philippines to start her own family. As we went through our morning routines, breakfast, pack and walk to school, we were aware of Rowena going through a divergent routine: pack, check passport and ticket, recheck, look forward with excitement and expectation for the airport bus.

But it's always harder to be left behind, and the air of loss is in the air, and we're hugging each other a little harder and a little more often than before.

And then, of course, there is the novel: which was batted back to me by my editor with the exhortation for 'one last heave!' but also with the 'Well done – really, really near now. You’ve done brilliant work on Eadric, Edmund , Godwin. I am really impressed.'

It's going to be finished again, today, and can't quite decide whether to go for more champagne. The problem is, really, there are a number of little stages between now and the final manuscript and I could be drunk from now till Christmas if I celebrated each one. There's proof editing, typsesetting, a few last chances for changes. Before the manuscript is printed, and published, and then the book, like rowena - or any of the friends we pick up and then misplace or lose in life - heads off towards a different destination.

Shield Wall goes live!

Hweat!

With the world being what it is, you can already pre-order Shield Wall from Amazon and The Book Depository - which has the advantage of providing free world wide shipping.

Who could beat that? Go knock yourself out!

What do authors do when they'd not writing?

My editor's had the book for four days now and not a peep! Shame on him!

Well. I've sorted through the boxes in the spare room, cooking more than the family can eat, and getting some exercise: as well as imbibing a touch of bubbly each night, now that hang-overs no longer mean a missed day of work. Not sure how much longer I can find things to do, but at least we have a holiday booked (first for six years no less) with our favourite Australians, in Bali, at the end of October.

Ah!

By which point I will be tearing my beard out in my frustration to get back to writing. Very much looking forward to getting into the next book, and getting some pay off from all the clever threads I have set up in book one.

- Just checked email, and no he still hasnt't got back to me!

Grrrr!

In the post

there was a time when finishing a book led to a long hour or two, sitting nervously over a dot matrix printer, refilling it with paper, removing printed sheathes and then putting it all into an envelope, and carrying you love-child to the post office, where it was sent, and mentally tracked from post to sorting office, and eventually to your editor's desk.

Comments came back by post. By hand.

Now, there is a little less ceremony. You finishing the book. Spell check, then pop it into an email and press send.


Shieldwall went off yesterday, at 149,143 words of un-putdownable action emotion and battle!

Usually, at this point (3 years, 11 months) I'm sick of the thing, but I love this book, and want to get straight back to it, just to iron out the last few little details.

And usually, finishing a novel leads to a hole in my life: like losing a lover, but with this book being the first of a series, I'm itching to get back.



The Scene of the crime....socks and all!



And something entirely random for Mid Autumn Festival

tolkien professor

It's funny where ideas and inspirations come from, and I cam across Corey Olson's podcast, The Tolkien Professor, recently and found it very informative: not least because it allows me to enjoy the works without actually having to read them; nor even that Corey Olsen is a professor with a phd in medieval literature, which gives him fabulous insights into the way Tolkien crafted his stories - but also (and I was talking to one of my postgrad students about this recently) - the way Tolkien framed and structured and thought about his stories was very different to the way we think now in the modern novel.

This is great - as it allows new depth and insight into a story - and offers an alternative to the more generic way of telling stories propogated through creative writing courses and hollywood script writing clinics.

Grump over. If you're at all a fan, go and subscribe, some really interesting material there.


Back on the book front, I managed to finish five chapters last week and send them over to my editor: which means I've polished fourteen overall and with seven to go. Hoping to finish it off by the end of the week, but who knows.