Oh wait, they didn't.  This news brought home to me through my current whole-story, line-by-line critical pass over Killer-Kate and Luke Lackland.  I'm about half-way through that now.

- Luke's strategy in the Rising, on more careful analysis, involves entirely too much of: "Ha!  The nobles are used to summer warfare!  But this is winter warfare, so ( Read more... )

A small piece of news, and a couple of questions, as Killer-Kate speeds towards its conclusion:

My very different Wood of Weyre side-project is now showing as three linked adult* fairy-stories, one per generation, with the third providing a natural terminus. I wonder if together they would add up to a short novel? The Children of Venus sequence ( Read more... )

Killer-Kate and Luke Lackland: 370 words.  Kate gives the Young Duke the first barrel.

Also several hundred words of the increasingly weird dual Wood of Weyre fairy-stories that are obtruding myself on my attention.  My Muse is veering between the Cinderella variant, and its Snow Whitey sequel a generation down the line, as each feeds back loopily ( Read more... )

The Princess out of Time: 480 words.  Theological discovery of the day - my Saturnists find the idea of 'eternity' somewhere between silly and blasphemous.  Their conceptualization of Faerie is... interesting: not necessarily especially insightful as a whole, but it's certainly got some illuminating new angles, and some interesting new candidates ( Read more... )

In other news, 500 lunch-break words of The Princess out of Time, the Kateverse's answer to Sleeping Beauty. It may or may not get finished: its main attractions are (i) it is writing and it occurred to me; and (ii) it's exploring a culture and a religious perspective that touches marginally on Three Katherines of Allingdale, but gets no direct ( Read more... )

It's International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day, and I perform my wretched work!

Here is a Kateverse folk-tale from Cauldale. Some tales are told in some form across all the universes with human beings in them. But when one of those human beings is Kit Fox, the Red Witch of Alland, the moral is liable to degenerate spectacularly...

( How the Wide World was saved from drowning in the sea that is the sky. )

Killer-Kate and Luke Lackland: 390 words. Lord Evil driven to his last bold throw. He's making half of it up as he goes along, and so am I. This can't in any way go wrong, especially if the Young Duke latches onto the thing there was never any chance of him latching onto because, oh, er, whoops. There are a lot of clever people in this room, and at ( Read more... )

Killer-Kate and Luke Lackland: 750 words.  The detested scene finished.  Fiery Younger Sister's work is done...decisively.  This can't possibly be anything other than a victory for my protagonists, eh?  I do now suspect that, seeing how this has played out, the problem in the next chapter to which Kate is the answer isn't going to be quite as ( Read more... )

Killer-Kate and Luke Lackland: 840 words, of the knife-fight between Fiery Younger Sister and a piece of very frisky scum indeed: nimble young tiger against heavy-pawed old black bear.  I may need to edit some of it for combat realism in the redraft.  Then again, I may not very much, because whilst FYS isn't explicitly supernatural, in her battle- ( Read more... )

Killer-Kate and Luke Lackland: 690 words.  Bringing Fiery Younger Sister's gruelling scene to boiling point.  FYS is reminding me of one of those cartoon characters who produce massive offensive weapons out of thin air at the drop of a hat.  She can't do that physically, but she can pull out of thin air a way to use anything offensively, because ( Read more... )