Here as promised is the first set of notes about Somewhere Else Entirely, the changes I have made to the noted chapters and what was going on in my mind when I started all this.

First, some basic details about the editing: I was very slack about Capitalization to begin with. Right through the story until about chapter 80 or so I was undecided when to use capitals (eg "Mistress") or lower case ("mistress"). I will fix all of those along the way so this will probably be the final mention of that. In most cases Capitals are required, especially when addressing someone in speech. There are a small number of occasions when a lower-case reference is more appropriate and those will stay.

In the early chapters I had not yet fully formed the distinctive dialect which subsequently developed. In fact it hadn't occurred to me that anything like that would happen or would be necessary. People talking to one another was done almost in colloquial English although of course it is all in the local tongue. I have gently changed some of the speech to more align with how they speak later on.

The major adjustment comes in chapter 3 where I decided that an extra day was required, thus adding an overnight stop. Several points here:

(i) At that time the whole landscape only existed in my head and distances were fairly indeterminate. Originally the road to Moxgo ran straight out of the small side valley to the canal and thence directly to the city. The distances just about permitted that journey (from the lookout to the city) to be done in one day. To do all that and to then visit the palace mid-afternoon was probably stretching things somewhat.

Around about chapter 20 I was contacted by both Julia Phillips and Di Wonder with offers of help. I may have mentioned in the past that my drafting skills suck; I sent to Di the vaguest sketch I had made of that end of the Great Valley and she turned it into a proper work of art for me. She made changes which I hadn't envisaged but that turned out (mainly) to be a good thing. My grasp of distances and directions had never been properly formed and her new map gave me a proper basis for the rest of the story.

One change Di made was to have the Moxgo road meet the Palarand-Brikant route at a three-way junction. This made Tanon's journey even longer and I wrestled with the best way to fix this. Some adjustments were made to the map but it still seemed less plausible to me, that they would travel all that way from the Lookout to the capital, bathe, change and get to the palace by mid-afternoon. Another overnight stop was required and the junction was the obvious place to do it.

(ii) At that time the facilities available to travelers was indistinct. Originally I had the caravan stop at a roadside tavern, not knowing that proper roadhouses would feature in future chapters. Turning the lunch stop into an overnight stop at a roadhouse seemed natural but that meant additional stops on the way down from the Lookout. It also meant that the caravan would arrive home much earlier so I have added in a lunch and a nap before Korond turns up with the gown.

(iii) Tanon and Jaxen have to get to Viridor to meet a ship; this would require a certain number of days travel. In order to accommodate the extra overnight stop I added two days to their journey, including an extra one for "unforeseen circumstances". This includes references in chapters 1 and 2.

(iv) To make the story consistent to readers I have edited and posted all three together. I don't think that this will be required in future, most chapters can be edited stand-alone.

Genesis of the story

When I started this I naturally had no idea at all what was about to happen. I innocently thought that I would end up with a story of about 35-40 chapters. Until then my longest effort had been The State does not make mistakes. That began as a 6-chapter story. There was more to tell so I wrote a 7-chapter sequel, The other side of the fence, and then a third book, Counsellor at Large, which ended up 15 chapters. They are published at BC as a single work, if you are wondering.

I was going to write a romance. Girls meets boy who just happens to be a Prince and it would be set in a kind of fantasy land where people still used swords and spoke funny. There would be a journey somewhere for some reason which would test their relationship and it would end, naturally, with rainbows and unicorns.

I very quickly realized that for Gary to appear on Anmar as Garia there had to be a good, solid reason which would be logical in the context of the story universe. However, I didn't want this to be about those who brought her here or for what reason except as a side issue. At that point I hadn't even decided on a transfer mechanism or a reason, just that they had to exist.

I wanted the journey down from the point where she was found to be as short as possible, since in effect this was dragging out the "reveal" and I thought it might put readers off. I wanted no more than two chapters but that proved cramped so it ended up three. (I have just made the third one even bigger!) I was determined that it would end with Garia's memory coming back, thus leaving the reactions of all concerned to the next chapter.

About Anmar

Of course, Anmar is somewhere else entirely so it would be unreasonable to expect the flora and fauna to be the same as on Earth. However, there had to be some link between the two so I decided that the (as yet undefined) Beings had seeded Anmar (and other worlds, including Earth) in the past with creatures from other worlds, over long periods of time, and that these might have evolved in different ways than they had on Earth. That is why we have creatures like dranakhs and frayen which sort-of resemble Earth creatures, but also why there are other creatures based on a six-legged (or six-limbed) origin.

Incidentally, 'frayen' is both singular and plural, like 'sheep', but I got confused with dranakh. Should the plural be dranakh or dranakhs? I eventually settled on the latter, but only by accident. Since I subsequently made the local language add 'is' or 'ris' to form a plural both of those are irregular forms. It doesn't seem to matter much when reading the story.

The reason why we have three moons is simple: To provide a clear indication that Garia isn't still somewhere on Earth. The orbits are arbitrary but useful: Tiede is just fun. Its orbit is like that of Deimos around Mars but has no other significance. Having Annis go round in seven days gives me a pretext for the locals to have a seven-day week. Similarly, Kalikan defines the month as 31-ish days. It was only later that I decided to clamp the menstrual period to Kalikan.

I also decided to make the Great Valley south of the equator, so the sun goes from right to left. There's no reason it has to be, it just made things a little more interesting.

At this stage most of the future plot is still a fog. I had a beginning and I knew what the end would be and it was up to me to make the middle to be interesting. I think that is one of the major pieces of advice I have for anyone writing a story: know how it is going to end. It may not end up exactly as you thought but at least you have something to aim at. Unfortunately, the middle can sometimes stretch somewhat...

That's it for now. I'll expand on some of the other story aspects in future blogs.

Thank you for reading.

Penny