Today

Windows live writer have updated it to look like Word. THIS IS NOT AN IMPROVEMENT, BILL. I can't fucking FIND anything. I hate-hate-hate-HATE not having menu bars. I don't want to have to look at all the pictures and work out what they all mean.

Other than cooking today (also made a mutton stew for Dad for the next 2 days while I'm not here)(with dumplings) I have started on the revising of Chiaroscuro. I need to add at least another 10k to the plot but first I'm going through it to implement all the things that I know Carina don't like. Contractions, filter words, semi-colons… It's actually not as full of these problems as Muffled Drum was—seems I've learned bad habits over 3 years. They may not take it, anyway, but I should be able to sell it somewhere—I hope. I really like the story, it's just a shame it hasn't done well up to now.

I also finished the video for Mere Mortals – so enjoy!  I'm a little pleased with this one!

 

argh!

What do you DO when your publisher ignores you regarding recovery of rights?  The rights were up at the end of January, and I told them months ago I would not be renewing the contract. I even had a response to that email, so they can't say they didn't know.  However, I need a formal letter to rescind their rights.  I've  emailed them three times to no avail. I suppose the next step is to send a recorded delivery letter?  I am not a happy bunny right now.

Ask Harlequin's Editors

Over on Twitter, there's a live chat going on – ask the editors a question, about queries, submissions, trends, whatever you like – ask a question and add #askeditor as a hashtag.  There's been some good input and out put so far.

"Temeraire" and why i was disappointed with Tongues of Serpents

I've been re-reading Victory of Eagles, after the disarster-dahling that was Tongues of Serpents (both by Naomi Novik) and I'd been trying to work out why ToS just wasn't working for me. But Victory of Eagles made it very very clear just in the first couple of chapters.

At the core of the book is the relationship between Temeraire (a massive Celestial dragon with a roar that can flay skin and disintegrate wood and stone) and his Captain, Laurence. Although Laurence is very remote and repressed—and I never found myself warming much to him—it's his interactions with Temeraire that brings him to life and more importantly Temeraire's feelings towards Laurence. It's a love affair—pure and simple and as such is hugely touching. There's a point in Victory of Eagles – two points actually where I am brought to tears by this relationship.

So Tongues of Serpents was almost a bucket of water in the face. It felt that Novik had lost that touch, that spark that had made so many of us fall in love with Temeraire—Laurence and he hardly spoke, the secondary characters were all but pushed to one side and the only dragons were a quite unpleasant bunch. We'd never really been in Laurence's head much, but in ToS we weren't in anyone's head at all, it seemed.

Another point I loved in the earlier books was the way the dragons are quite child-like in their behaviour.Some of them can be hugely intelligent, but they have a limited view. There's a scene in VoE where they bury some men (after Temeraire roundly told some dragons they couldn't eat the bodies). And it was matter of fact—they buried them (too deep, which is a nice comic touch) and then lowered their heads (because that was the thing to do) and then went off to scoff more cows.  There's a large pinch of comedy in these books,and it was entirely missing in ToS.

So, I really hope it was an aberration, and that Novik hasn't lost her love of the series. I'll probably give the next one a go, and hope it's back to the quality of the rest.