In the Labyrinth

Finished Editing New Moon, Tackling Sadar's Keep

I am happy that I finished re-editing New Moon. Mostly, I leaned it up, took out the first time writer adverbs, streamlined awkward sentences, standardized spellings (that was suprise) and in general, enjoyed taking up a long ago project and giving it the polish the harried writer with two small children didn't have time to do back then. It is my hope that anyone who the read the earlier edition and re-reads this one will not notice what is missing -- which will mean that I have preserved that which was good and made it more apparent. 

The month of March is reserved for Sadar's Keep -- otherwise known as the dreaded middle novel in a trilogy; the novel that is always longer than it should be, the novel that begins after the fact but doesn't reach a final conclusion. I am bracing myself for this book. I loved writing it and that may be the problem, that I loved it too much. I lingered too much, taking my time. So, the task now will be to carefully, surgically, remove about 20k words and tighten it up. Make it march a bit. There's lots of wonderful moments, and new characters that I greatly admire. I want them to shine, the pace to be driven by their stories and not my desire to lie down in the Avadares Mountains and smell the pines. It will a be full month. But I am determined to make it sing.

Art: Sergio Cerchi, Jules Bastien-Lepage - Resting Peasants, 1877, Frances Gearhart, Sierre Spurs, 1935

Faces of Oran: Mixed Media

I dug this out of my original this National Geographic, April 1982 photograph of a young Bedouin girl who was the early model in my imagination for Lirrel -- although I based her and her family structure on one of the matrilineal nomadic tribes in India that made their living through performance of song, dances, and acrobatics. Next, is a recent find by artist Dent Niggemeyer which had overtones of the Vaggers, a class of Oran travellers whose faces are tattoed with tree-like whorls and last a wonderful small watercolor by Australian artist Cherry Hood which reminded me of a younger Jobber.

"The slender woman slipped quietly into The Grinning Bird. Kai noted the way she moved with deliberate steps, her vagger's staff gripped tightly in one hand. Her almond shaped eyes matched the deep brown of her cloak and her facial tattoos deppened the color of her cheeks with dark swirling designs like the whorls of a tree. " (New Moon.)