Category: The Plains of Kallanash

On cover art

Everyone agrees that the cover image on a book is crucial for success these days. At least, for anyone below the rank of megastar author, that is. J K Rowling could perhaps put out a book with a totally blank cover apart from the title and her name without impinging on sales, but there are very few of whom that can be said. For most authors, a good cover is an asset and a bad one will lose you sales. But what exactly is a good or bad cover? It’s quite hard to pin down these qualities exactly, although most people recognise one or the other when they see them. A good cover is one that achieves all of the following:

Posted April 21, 2014 by PaulineMRoss in Publishing/marketing, The Plains of Kallanash / 3 Comments

First reader

It’s always a scary moment, handing over a finished book to the first person to read it in its entirety. Will it work? Does the plot even make sense? Will they get the emotional parts, the jokes, the world, the characters? I’d expected the first reader to be a stranger, a random internet volunteer to beta read, but I got talking to my daughter about ‘The Plains of Kallanash’ and she wanted to try it. I wasn’t expecting much. She’s not really into fantasy, apart from Terry Pratchett. She’s tried ‘Game of Thrones’ and found it too heavy. So although Kallanash isn’t grimdark or anywhere close, I thought it might be too long and tedious for her. I thought she might get bogged down in the weirdness of a full-on secondary world fantasy. I thought she might simply find it boring.

Posted February 19, 2014 by PaulineMRoss in Current writings, The Plains of Kallanash / 0 Comments

Character profile: Hurst

Hurst is one of the two main characters in ‘The Plains of Kallanash’. At the time the story opens, he is thirty six years old. Like Mia, Hurst’s father was lead husband at a Karning. When Hurst was born, his father Tanist was already on the fourth line, despite being only twenty five. His mother was the fourth wife, and she and Hurst’s father became a settled couple the moment she joined the marriage. Hurst was their first child. The family moved steadily from Karning to Karning, and by the time Hurst was eleven, had reached the border, the eighth line on the western side. Hurst’s mother died when he was twelve, and Hurst grew closer to his father as a result.

Posted January 28, 2014 by PaulineMRoss in Character profile, The Plains of Kallanash / 1 Comment

Character profile: Mia

Mia is one of the two main characters in ‘The Plains of Kallanash’. At the time the story opens, she is twenty five, and has been married for ten years. Mia was born into a Karninghold family. Her mother was the second wife in the marriage, and, like all the wives’ children, her official father was the lead husband. In this case, he was also her blood father, for her parents had been a settled couple for many years. Her father was well into middle age when she was born and her mother over forty, a rather unexpected late child for both of them.

Posted January 19, 2014 by PaulineMRoss in Character profile, The Plains of Kallanash / 2 Comments

Raising children in ‘The Plains of Kallanash’

Adulthood is achieved at the age of fifteen. At that point, any adult can have sex and have children, married or not (Slaves excepted). Contraceptive herbs are freely available. There is a lot of local variation, though. In the villages, children are a haphazard occurrence, and people rarely marry at all. In and around the Karningholds, matters are rather more orderly, and people tend to marry or form other regular relationships before having children. There are economic considerations, too, so amongst craftsfolk and those setting up businesses, marriage will be considered only when they can afford to raise the children (since men and women both work, supporting a wife isn’t a consideration). There is a certain amount of experimentation, sometimes even before the proper age, and some of it is same-gender (which isn’t an issue).

Posted January 3, 2014 by PaulineMRoss in The Plains of Kallanash / 0 Comments

Religious hierarchy in ‘The Plains of Kallanash’

Religion is uniform over the whole Karningplain (the area of the plains covered by Karnings, and ruled from the Ring). The Word of the Gods was first brought by people from the northern coast, some four hundred years ago. There were numerous Petty Kingdoms in existence then, and one by one the kings were converted to the new religion (before that there were numerous different faiths). When all the Petty Kingdoms had converted, and the Word of the Gods had been brought even into the Ring, a new calendar was declared. The story opens in calendar year 205 of the Word of the Gods.

Posted December 29, 2013 by PaulineMRoss in The Plains of Kallanash / 0 Comments

The exposition swingometer

The Brightmoon world is quite complicated, and ‘The Plains of Kallanash’ has an intricate social structure that’s unlike anything in the modern or historical world (as far as I know). It features multiple marriages, with from four to twelve members, which means that many conventional assumptions about the relationships involved simply don’t work. For instance, it can’t be assumed that sex is an automatic part of the relationship, as it would be between a couple. With two couples, one couple can be sexually active and the other not, one husband may have both wives, or both husbands may share one wife. Even if they are all sexually active, the actual pairings may vary, and can be anything those involved want, from straightforward couples to a complete free-for-all. With more than two couples in the marriage, the combinations can get much more complicated. Anything goes, so long as they all agree […]

Posted December 9, 2013 by PaulineMRoss in The Plains of Kallanash, Writing musings / 0 Comments

Getting characters right

I’ve received quite a few critiques now for the opening chapters of ‘The Plains of Kallanash’, and they’ve generally been positive. At the low level (line editing), there isn’t much comment; a few word changes, the odd punctuation error, and a few places where a whole or part of a sentence is seen as extraneous. At a slightly higher level, there are some scenes or even sentences which are seen as having no purpose beyond world-building (and for some that’s true, but others are necessary foreshadowing). The main issue is in knowing what exactly is going on. Some people like everything spelled out for them, and some can go with the flow. Knowing just how much to explain is a complicated business, which I will discuss in detail in another post.

Posted November 18, 2013 by PaulineMRoss in Current writings, The Plains of Kallanash / 0 Comments

That tricky opening chapter

Everyone agrees that the opening to a book is critical. Some say it’s the first five pages, some the first 18 lines (the first page on a typical print book), and some will tell you that you have to grab the reader by the throat within the first sentence, or All is Lost. Well, to be honest, if a reader is so flighty that they’re going to toss a book based solely on the first line, I’m not sure I want them anyway. The first page is trickier. I can see the case for putting something there that’s so compelling that a reader absolutely has to turn the page. It’s all very well for George R R Martin to stick a forty page prologue up front, full of characters who promptly die, dialogue that is deeply portentous but unintelligable, and events that will possibly be understandable three books later, if […]

Posted October 22, 2013 by PaulineMRoss in Current writings, The Plains of Kallanash, Writing musings / 0 Comments

The joy of editing

‘The Plains of Kallanash’ is the first book I ever actually completed (in first draft), so now that it’s had several months to brew while I finished another book, it’s time to begin the process of editing. I’ve always imagined that my writing is pretty clean. I don’t make many errors of grammar, spelling or punctuation, and I edit to some extent as I go along, cleaning up yesterday’s writing before starting a new section, adding in elements needed to the early chapters as the plot develops and occasionally revising whole chunks of text when I reached a lull. So it was shock to reread the opening chapters after a spell away from it. Who wrote this crap? That was my first thought. It was long-winded and dull. I’d tinkered a bit with the opening paragraph, but it still didn’t work. Then there was a long section that was basically […]

Posted October 13, 2013 by PaulineMRoss in The Plains of Kallanash / 1 Comment