Monthly Archives: July 2024

As I work back through my old notes for my novel-in-progress—notes scribbled on scraps of paper, some dating back a year—I find bits that I’m not sure can be incorporated sensibly into the Fires manuscript, but I’m reluctant to trash these bits. Therefore, I’m saving them here, just in case I’m inspired to use them in my final editing passes. “Kill your darlings,” they say. Eliminate any part of your writing—scenes, sentences, descriptions—that you love, but which don’t serve your story. I’m not ready to decapitate the following, so they’ll stay here for now, awaiting their fate.

On the Void’s Time-Warping

In reality, all of her siblings were now older than Nina. She had lived most of her life in a world where time passed far more slowly than on Ladrehdin. She was now, practically speaking, the baby of the family. But she’d never admit that, for Nina would never cease to take pride in being the eldest daughter of House Verek.

On Nina’s Permanent Departure from the Island World

… what Willow had said about Legary’s children from his first marriages to mortal women, how his offspring had grown to resent him for never growing old or leaving them an inheritance. Nina’s own descendants on the island world were now many generations removed from their matriarch. They had the family house on the bay and the magian vigor of their inheritance, and they needed her no longer.

Where Is Nina’s Sword?

Nina’s rapier figured prominently in The Karenina Chronicles (Waterspell Book 5). But in The Fires of Farsinchia (Book 6), it’s nowhere to be seen. That’s because, at the end of KC, Nina had left it at home in Ruain. Thus, she doesn’t have it with her when she makes the leap back through the void to the Ore Hills, at the beginning of Fires.

Her rapier was at home in Ruain. Nina had not worn the blade when she crossed from Weyrrock to the islands beyond the void. Her other weapons—bow, sling, and throwing knife—had had their uses in that distant world, but her rapier would always have been out of place, too different from any weaponry that was commonly known in the archipelago. But here in the desert of Ladrehdin, she missed it. Perhaps Dalton could eventually collect the weapon from Weyrrock, bring it to the port city of Seawood, and send it by messenger to Legary at Granger. Nina could then retrieve it from Legary, the next time she visited her brother at his home in the southern grasslands.

On Wolfram as Courier

Wolfe is only the second courier ever admitted into Ruain on behalf of Galen. Remember that Galen sent a messenger many years ago, bearing a bracelet for Carin and a cloak pin for Verek. That rider (in Book 4) had been a wandering wysard from the mountains, known to Galen’s master, Orton the Smith.