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

As before, these are notes which explain my thought processes and decisions while writing SEE, provided here as a service (or a warning!) to other writers.

These three chapters have only minor adjustments in general. The usual things like Capitalization and fixing typos. There are a few cases where I have changed "Yes" to "Aye" but in the main it will be difficult to spot most alterations. I have slightly changed one or two speeches but nothing that has any major significance.

Chapter 4

In this chapter Garia is abruptly aware of her circumstances and realizes that they are difficult. She suddenly has a different body, one that is smaller, weaker and more vulnerable. She has no idea how women are treated in this society so she has to tread carefully.

All she can do is follow people around the palace and do what she is told. In general, most people seem to want to help her and this is a certain reassurance, but there is always Morlan lurking in the background. There is as yet little opportunity for her to get an overview of where she is.

Chapter 5

This is the first battle with Morlan and she has to do it all on her own. Morlan has a preconceived idea of what Garia is and assumes that much of what she tells him is nonsense. The session does not end well. Fortunately a familiar face is at hand to help her recover from the confrontation and the King further reassures her.

When they first meet Keren is wearing clothes of a type not mentioned anywhere else in the story. At the time I wrote this chapter I had no idea what the clothing would look like, the royal colors or anything like that. Leather breeches seem questionable for exercising in the hot summer sun but we do not learn just what Keren had been doing; if for example he had spent the morning in the Armory his gear would have been acceptable. Subsequently his movements match those of Garia and he dresses differently.

Chapter 6

The second battle with Morlan shows Garia beginning to fight back but still having no idea how she will convince anyone of her plight - or even if that is a sensible thing to do. This time she talks with Keren, who has a more open mind, and seems to convince him that she really is from another world.

Garia is frustrated because she has been placed into a situation where nobody wants to tell her anything. She has a temper but obviously wants to keep it in check in this unusual situation. Later on we'll learn that she has knowledge of techniques for handling her temper but against that the hormones in her new body threaten to take her unawares.

At the end of the day, the second since she arrived at the palace, she gets the chance to physically explore her new body. I decided that, as it was a gender change, I could not see anyone overlooking the opportunity to find out what the new body did. I didn't feel that it was necessary to go into great graphic detail, though.

Garia

I'm not sure where the name came from. It sort of just surfaced during the weeks before I started writing. I had no idea if it was a real name or anything. Subsequently I have learned that Garia is a place in India, but the word can also mean "small girl" which suits the circumstances completely. Recently most searches also return a brand of golf cart. I have not found the name in use in any other story.

If you have ever read the David Eddings series "The Belgariad" you'll know that the hero there is called Garion. I subsequently realized that people could think that I took the name from there, especially since the tone of some of the story could be said to be similar, but this is definitely not so.

Keren

Another name thought up at the spur of the moment. As the story progressed I found that I was thinking up hundreds of names, many of which would appear only once or twice. However, this does reflect real life at the risk of confusing the reader.

It had to follow the naming rules for Anmar, which at this stage were rudimentary. All names begin with a consonant, although I boobed with the Queen's eldest daughter Elizet. I have subsequently passed that off as being a link to the distant land Terys came from, where the rules are likely different. Female names end with -a, -et, -el or -y while male names end with -n, -ar, -s and occasionally -o. There are exceptions, usually for people who are presumed foreigners.

Background

Since most of this story is told from Garia's point of view, I did not feel it necessary to provide any background beyond what she would know at any one time. A lot of stories spend several paragraphs near the beginning explaining where it takes place, who various people are, their relations to one another and so on. Personally I find this off-putting. I tend to gloss over such descriptions and pick up what I need to know further along the tale.

In fact, I prefer the way I wrote this, as it provides the reader with a mystery on top of everything else. If you want to find out why something is the way it is, read more! I don't think I let it get out of hand anywhere, though. If the reader has to know something at any one time, there will always be somebody ready to explain it to Garia.

The palace

This can be thought of as a grid, with the buildings occupying the lines and with courtyards in the squares between. All courtyards have cloisters, though some will be paved and others set out as formal gardens. There is no map of the palace in existence. Very few rooms are specifically defined in relation to one another. You can assume that the palace is vast, with maybe 6-8 columns wide and perhaps 12-15 rows deep, half of which are within the old Chivan fort.

Since the description of the palace layout is so vague (and deliberately so) I have provided a little extra information in What Milsy Did, though that provides no help regarding the overall layout. For the purposes of either story, we don't need to know any more and more detail would just get in the way.

Author's Commentary on Somewhere Else Entirely: Chapters 7 to 10

Edits to these chapters consist mostly of corrections to spelling and adjustments to style. There is one sequence which required further adjustment which I will note below.

Titles

Where titles have been used in speech to the person concerned, I have now made sure that these are, as is proper, all changed to upper case. In situations where the person is referred to by title only in a conversation by two or more others, it is sometimes more appropriate to leave the title in lower case. Where they are referred to by title and name they would of course be upper-cased.

Aye and Yes

When I originally began writing this I understood that all speech would be in the local tongue - which still does not have a name, by the way. So I used colloquial English, US dialect, with the assumption that readers would understand that it wasn't English and make allowances. This is a common technique used in almost every genre for different reasons and it is well understood by everyone who reads.

As the story developed I began to notice that certain eccentricities of speech were creeping in but I was not particularly worried to begin with. After all, one might expect the inhabitants of a palace to speak a little different than the common man in the street or field.

One of these eccentricities was the use of the word "Aye" as well as the word "Yes". I have no particular policy regarding when one would be used instead of the other but it seems to me, from reading the story back, that "Aye" would be used more by men than by women; more when someone of lesser status agreed with or acknowledged a remark by someone of greater status, and also when acknowledging a direct command.

There are also the "Customary rejoinders": "As you say" can be seen as an agreement whereas "As you command" is obviously a response to a direct command. "As you wish" and "As you desire" are somewhere in the middle. These have become common mannerisms in the local tongue. I have sometimes used these to avoid having to use a common English phrase such as would be used in the US or the UK.

I intend to slightly rework the earlier chapters to give the same flavor of dialect as developed in the later chapters. Naturally, Garia's speech does not follow the above rules, but mostly resembles the way Gary would normally have spoken on Earth.

US and UK dialects and phrases

I decided from the outset that my protagonist would be a US citizen and that the story would be written entirely in US English. I'm using the US spell-checker on my LibreOffice Writer software and this has mostly worked, except where both forms seem to be valid.

This has been generally successful except where I have occasionally tripped up over word differences and usages. This means that I have used for example "trainers" instead of "sneakers". Any of those that I find I will correct as I go along.

Upstairs and Downstairs

I had a slight problem here, since I am British and Gary is supposed to be American, and the majority of the readers will be American too. This is because in Britain we refer to the lowest floor above ground as the "Ground Floor" while in the US that would be the "First Floor". Above that would be the "First Floor" in Britain but the "Second Floor" in the US.

I decided to avoid the problem entirely by not using either convention. I used "Upper Level" or even just "Upstairs" and "Lower Level" or "Downstairs" instead. This meant that the palace has only two levels (apart from the towers) but that made sense too. The whole of the Great Valley is alluvial soil which means that buildings generally wouldn't be too tall because the ground would be too soft.

Chapter 7, Unexpected Visitors

This begins with Garia attempting her Tai Chi. "Is that a dance, Mistress?" Of course, although I did not realize it at the time, this turns out to become a running joke throughout the whole story.

The 'tea' is of course the herbal drink known later as pel. At this point I had not named it, even though I knew I would have to eventually. It is a direct equivalent of tea and is drunk by absolutely everyone.

Garia's demonstration of knowledge blows Morlan away and makes him reconsider what she is. He sees possible gain to himself and begins to think of ways of making use of his advantage. All this is merely hinted at here since my ideas about antagonists had not yet formed at all.

Garia's temper also begins to make itself known here, although she manages to keep it under control. I did not want her to be either placid or completely unmanageable but perhaps just on the fiery side of 'normal' and able to make use of her 'mental exercises' to control herself. Of course she hasn't really encountered her female hormones at this point...

"A cloth for your Mistress"

I wrestled with this one for a fair while since I tried hard to avoid using the word "handkerchief". I reasoned, probably incorrectly, that the locals wouldn't have a local equivalent of that word so it wouldn't be heard in the 'automatic translation' going on in Garia's head. Hence, cloths appear which get used for everything. As I subsequently use words like "scarves", etc it probably wouldn't have mattered much.

Those of Yod

Thought up literally on the spur of the moment to advance the plot, Those of Yod turn out to become somewhat more important to the story than I originally imagined. What I was aiming for was something like a 17th-century version of Nazi Germany, softened slightly by the fact that nobody has gunpowder so no state would be more powerful than any other. We don't learn, even at the end of SEE, exactly what is going on within Yod. That will probably be revealed in a later tale.

The Yodans behavior at the banquet is interesting. They don't want to offend their hosts but equally, they feel that their own status is higher than that of any of the locals. Their responses are very non-committal. When asked about the meal Farber Blackshield does not actually reply to Garia's question but deflects it.

The banquet also provides an excuse to let Keren and Garia interact more closely together in an adversarial environment. Garia is the first to realize that something doesn't ring true about the visitors, but Keren is a quick thinker as well.

Chapter 8, A Bump in the Night

I dreamed most of the first part of this chapter the night after I wrote the previous one. It all flowed so well and so naturally that it didn't take long to write down at all. Most of what happens is a logical consequence of what went before so isn't difficult to work out. At this point I had not decided whether Morlan was innocent or not, so just made him disappear for a while.

Parlor and Sitting Room

At this stage I had not really thought greatly about the organization of the palace except that it would be large and have many rooms and corridors. As originally written, I have Garia taken to the parlor, which is on the lower floor, but later taken a short distance to Elizet's room because I was thinking of the sitting room instead, which is part of the Royal Suite and therefore on the upper floor. I have now fixed that, and also the inaccurate description of the placement of Elizet's and Malann's suites.

Vast, Multi-Dimensional Beings

Actually, I hadn't wanted to call them that to begin with, which is why in chapter 8 they are referred to as Immense Multi-Dimensional Beings. I was of course conscious of the Douglas Adams connections, having listened to the original radio broadcasts all those many years ago. I was mildly concerned with copyright issues. Subsequently, I forgot that I had changed the name slightly.

For Garia to have appeared on Anmar at all there had to be a plausible reason, one which could also account for her turning up in the wrong body. I fully intended this story to be about Garia's experiences on Anmar and her romance with Keren but in the back of my mind I always knew that I would have to resolve the essential how and why of the transfer eventually.

I did know at this point that (i) she was real and not dreaming, (ii) she was, as she explained, a copy and not the original and that (iii) her time on Anmar was strictly limited to one Earth year. At this point I had not even thought of a calendar and there was no timeline for when anything happened, since I had no idea what would happen anyway.

The final section just makes known to the reader that there is something else going on than just a lost girl being put up in a palace. My intention was to ignore the Beings until near the end of the story and that is mostly what happened.

Chapter 9, Conversations with the Queen

Aftermath of the previous night's activities. This brings home to everyone - including the author - just how important Garia will be to the whole region.

The enforced inactivity gives Garia the chance to tell Terys - and incidentally, the reader - about her background. This also introduces the curious concept of the two Captains of the Palace Guard. I had not completely determined how that would play out but it became apparent soon enough. This is where we also discover that Morlan has been working on his own plans.

The subject of martial arts is introduced, and I freely admit that I know little of the subject. That is one reason why I have been deliberately vague about what she practiced and fine details of the exercises she did. I don't think, in context, that specific knowledge of that kind would be useful to the average reader except perhaps to trip the author up.

The Queen knits

This was entirely an atmosphere thing. An alert reader might discover that no further mention of Terys knitting occurs anywhere else in the story. The same reader might wonder just who the Queen is knitting for. The answer is probably that Terys is knitting baby clothes for the children of one of her daughters and that once these have been dispatched, she would not make any more because she would not know what size to make. Or something.

"Yes and no"

Another phrase which ended up appearing all through the story, entirely by chance. None of what she says in response is contrived, the phrase is honestly said, but by the end everybody is making fun of the phrase.

Gerdas

A Questor, but someone much more amenable that Morlan. He is astonished by what he is told but has no problem believing Garia. He proves an ally to Garia in subsequent conflicts with local custom.

Chapter 10, Astronomy, Cutlery, Murder

Garia adapts to life in the Royal Corridor. This provides an opportunity to ask about local conditions and so on, broadening the range of what everybody knows. Later she attempts to satisfy Gerdas's questions and the full import of her situation is brought home to her.

Then we introduce, entirely by accident, the single item which begins the whole Industrial Revolution. That is, of course, the fork. Nobody has the faintest idea what is going to happen, including the author. The whole idea of getting involved in such a huge undertaking had not occurred to me when I began writing this. I think that if I had not had to write that into the plot the story would have ended up at the original 30-40 chapters intended.

Of course, once I thought about it I realized that I had no alternative. Unless I completely invoked the Prime Directive there was little chance that Garia would remain in Palarand and not tell them of developments that could progress their society.

Besides, it occurred to me that starting an Industrial Revolution might be the whole reason she was there in the first place. But I couldn't just jump to that conclusion either, which is why we end up with the Council of the Two Worlds.

This raises an important point when writing stories. If you come across a plot point that is difficult to resolve, try and let your characters do it. That is the principle I have followed most of the way through this story. Sometimes you have to over-rule them but usually they will do what they need to do for reasons that make sense both to them and to the reader.

There is a potential plot problem when Garia goes off with Keren and Gerdas to Morlan's study to measure her jeans. She does not have a female chaperone and Terys notices. I decided that, although Terys could have let one of her maids go with Garia, she allows them to proceed without a companion because nobody has yet come to terms with Garia's real importance to Palarand.

Somewhere Else Entirely

Of course, I knew before I began that was what I wanted to call the story. It only became apparent much later on that the phrase kept appearing all the time. Again, there is no contrivance, no desire to have the phrase in every chapter, although at times it certainly seems that way. All the mentions are entirely appropriate to the occasion.

The calendar adjustments

For some reason I wanted to have three moons in the story. Kalikan obviously has to be a Lunar replacement, in order to get tides and menstruation right, amongst many other things. Annis is set closer with an orbit of ~7 days, which provides a convenient basis for the use of a week. The smallest moon, Teide, is based on Phobos and is just there for fun.

I decided to make the calendar usage different than Earth's by having the weeks, months and years adjusted frequently to keep in step with the moons. Our Western calendar is based solely on the annual cycle and goes back to Babylonian times. Even then it isn't accurate, since the start date is arbitrary rather than being based on the Winter Solstice. Some societies and religions do use Lunar cycles but I don't think they resemble what I did here.

Author's Commentary on Somewhere Else Entirely: Chapters 11 to 14

These chapters have the usual typographical tweaks but there are a number of questions which arose here and others which had later implications.

Chapter 11, Morning Difficulties

At about this point I began to get worried. After all, I had written ten chapters and the plot appeared to be developing v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y. While writing State I had gotten through six months in as many chapters. I spent a little time trying to make some kind of plan for the future but then decided that this was going to be one of my more substantial efforts so I could relax a bit. Little did I know...

In fact, it turns out that this single day occupies three whole chapters. I can't say that any of it is wasted.

Forks

Garia had to provide something of value that would prove that she would become important in the future. Forks seemed to be the simplest item to make to demonstrate that. At this point it still hadn't dawned on me that I'd have to deal with the whole Industrial Revolution.

Shelda and Yolda

Garia was always going to come up against entrenched custom. The fact that she was now a young shortish girl was never going to make her life easy but it was also necessary for her to understand the kind of problems she would have to overcome in the future. However, I didn't want to make this story a continuous battle against people and custom. In the future I assumed that she would eventually get to a position where she would win people over. Of course, at this point I didn't know whether she would or not.

Chapter 12, Afternoon Arrivals

Pigeonholes

This is a seemingly innocent word but one that caused me much trouble later on. It is appropriate for the word to be used in Chapter 12 as it would be familiar to Gary. However, while writing What Milsy Did I realized that of course Milsy would not know that word, and so I struggled to find a description of something that would be blindingly obvious to most educated Earth people.

Gowns and dresses

Although it is never explained aloud anywhere, I had decided that naturally servants and 'commoners' would be wearing dresses but noble ladies would be wearing gowns. It is likely that the distinction could be of name only but that was the custom I chose.

This is one of the reasons why Yolda becomes so difficult when Garia asks her for something to wear to climb the Watch Tower.

Other Lands

There is a reference to 'coastal nations'. At that time no map of Alaesia existed and I had not even named anywhere other than Palarand. I knew at this point that Palarand was at the mouth of the Sirrel (although even Garia did not know that name yet) and that there would be other nations beyond the estuary, but that was all.

Chapter 13, The Die is Cast

There is a reference to "the Dukes who ran much of Palarand". At this time I had given no thought at all to the organization of the Kingdom or even its extent. I realized that the King probably wouldn't handle much of the day-to-day decision-making himself but I had not gone beyond that. Having a hierachical tree of nobility to run things seemed appropriate.

This is the chapter where Garia discoveres that she is not, in fact, still on Earth and that she is not a time-traveler but instead on another planet. She still has no idea if she is in the same galaxy or even in the same universe, though. The location really doesn't matter much to the central plot but there are still several philosophical questions that have to be resolved before the story ends.

The Scribe

At this time I had little idea of the detailed organization of the Guild system. Now I do, so I have tweaked the introduction to the meeting of Pitchell. Also, I used the expressions "Quick Scribe" and "Speed Scribe" to describe someone who could take what are essentially shorthand notes. This was a mistake and I am correcting all references to read "Quick Scribe".

Chapter 14, The Training Field

I still hadn't even worked out the organization of the Palace Guard, although I decided that I wanted to make some of the ranks different. After all, it would smell a little if they exactly replicated Earth ranks. Since at this point I hadn't worked out the transfer mechanism I didn't know how many people might have been transferred from Earth to Anmar, where they might have ended up and what they might have known about military matters.

Apart from Jenet, nobody has yet seen the Tai Chi, so her display on the Training Field is an eye-opener for everybody. A few of the men will have come across her in passing but what she is and why she is at the palace is a mystery for everyone.

I had arbitrarily named the halls where the men practised, I have now made those consistent with later references.

The icing on the cake is showing the watch to Parrel and Tarvan.

I made a small mistake by only providing Garia with a watch and a wallet when she was found. It didn't occur to me until later that Gary would also have had at least a set of keys and a cellphone with him when... whatever happened on Earth. Later on, I temporize by suggesting that these items may have fallen out of Garia's pockets when she was left on the mountainside.

A cellphone would have been useful for any number of reasons. Gary might have taken a selfie so he could show those interested what he looked like on Earth. However, it would only last as long as the battery and then it just becomes an interesting lump of plastic, at least until Garia can figure out a way to charge it. On balance I think the story is better without it.

Author's Commentary on Somewhere Else Entirely: Chapters 15 to 18

I'm now into the meat of the story (or so I innocently believed, anyway) and I am working my way through the preliminaries before the essential action takes place - the as yet completely undetermined journey to the north, which will resolve everything.

Well, it did and it didn't, but that is for another commentary. For now, Garia is still establishing her place in the palace structure.

Chapter 15, Fire and Ashes

Garia wants to train but she knows that it will be an uphill struggle. Nobody local seems to have the faintest clue what she is even talking about, let alone whether she should be doing it or not. In fact, that may be to her advantage. She wants to do something more or less completely new and that is probably why they let her do it.

Yolda

It is possible to see Yolda's point of view. Somebody who has barely been in the palace a week and already asking for apparently preposterous things. Climbing towers is one thing, but wearing clothing no decent woman would be seen dead in, well! Better to stop such nonsense before it even gets started...

Of course, Yolda does not know that the Queen is fully behind Garia's apparent whims. Terys has already seen that Garia can do things that no regular girl can and is curious to see what her limits might be. She will be astonished by the final result but it won't disappoint her.

For Garia's part, she just wants to continue exercising as Gary might have done on Earth but she doesn't want to antagonize those already in the palace structure if she can help it. She has ended up in a strange place with no real friends (yet) and knows that she doesn't need to make enemies if she can help it.

The Funeral

This sequence caused a sudden reality check. Up until now I had made a brief reference to "the temple" and the word "Maker" but I had limited religious references until I could fully work out something. Morlan's pyre dumped that into my lap and I had not only to work out some instant funeral rites but also a possible religious background to the whole thing.

The funeral itself seemed to be simple enough to establish but later on, when I wrote other funerals, I forgot what I had written for the first one and made some changes in the order of events. The later versions actually proved to be a better way of doing things and so I have reordered this one to correspond.

The problem is one of comfort and practicality: who wants to try and make themselves heard above a roaring fire, while standing with your back to it and trying hard not to get burned? Much better to do what I wrote later and get the eulogies for the deceased over before the pyre was lit.

Religion

I really, really, didn't want to get involved with religion in this story if I could manage it at all. It would just be a distraction and there was already enough going on to occupy my attention. I wanted something simple and low key and I think that is what I managed.

The religion - if it can even be called that - is simply an expression that something had to have made things the way they were and that obviously there was no way anybody was going to be able to find out whom or what. It was only later, at the Harvest Festival, that I invented the idea of the "Great Convocation" which proved a useful idea for ruling out not only most religions but the occult and magic as well.

Chapter 16, Wrath of the Queen

We all know places like the Palace Wardrobe. Often they are called "Stores" or "The Warehouse" or something like that. The person in charge often resembles a ptuvil. Yolda is no different in that respect, but her treatment of Garia goes beyond what she should be doing and the Queen is right to step in.

Chapter 17, On the Mat

I think the first section more or less explains itself. Garia now has a body with a completely different shape and, as she says, she has run on 'autopilot' since she arrived on Anmar. Once Keren points out to her just how different she is now she begins to understand that she has to do things differently - and that this might bring her advantages as well as limitations.

Keren also has a revelation, and that is how Garia's touch affects him. Now, presumably, there have been a number of eligible Princesses or others whom he has entertained, but it would seem that his response to Garia is different than that of anyone he has had dealings with before. In his position, it is natural for him to confide in his mother.

Paper making

This is the major step which is required before anything else gets done and it is fortunate for the author that the process is so simple. Garia proceeds to demonstrate that paper is indeed simple to make and she knows that once the guildsmen have seen how to do it they will experiment.

Tarvan

At this point in the story I didn't know whether Tarvan would become a major character or not. It occurred to me that he might be useful for the introduction of electricity to Anmar and so I had Garia ask him about making copper wire - in large quantities.

It never occurred to me that Tarvan would end up playing an entirely different part, but that was because I hadn't yet dreamed of the events which would take place in Dekarran, resulting in Milsy returning to the palace in Garia's place.

Chapter 18, Parrel Gets Busy

This chapter mostly concerns the meeting of the Council of the Two Worlds in the following evening. Much is spoken about here but the main item is the introduction of Float Glass. My own experience of such matters is about the same as that of Garia - I have seen it done on TV. That is why there is a certain amount of hand-waving, since Garia knows little more and the guildsmen will have to do their own experiments.

The other major point at the meeting is the exploration of printing, which will arrive shortly. Obviously, once paper is in production removeable type printing must follow.

The final part is Garia exploring her own response to Keren's touch. As a boy Gary would have had no experience of such a thing but her body reacts in a perfectly natural way. She tries to figure out if this means she is becoming more female mentally.

Author's Commentary on Somewhere Else Entirely: Chapters 19 to 22

In these chapters a major character gets introduced and Garia receives a shock which underlines her new reality to her. Otherwise, the business of introducing basic technology to Palarand continues.

There isn't too much in these chapters that required major attention.

Chapter 19, The Secretary

Although I had not originally planned it this way, it seemed to me that the way I had laid out the situation in the palace was going to cause grief to Garia. There's just so much going on in her life right now and she has only been there less than two weeks!

First, though, now that Garia has figured her own body out it is time to have some fun with the Prince. After handing him a drubbing he hadn't expected, he realizes that she really does have important things to teach the guardsmen... and that her chosen form of exercise involves some really intimate encounters.

Of course, I know squat all about any martial art, which is why you won't find specific terms and movements described in this story. It was important to the plot, though, so I have just gone [handwave] fusion [handwave] and that seems to be enough for most purposes.

Merizel

There aren't many people of Garia's age in the palace when she arrives - at least, not of a status that she would be able to be friends with. Doubtless the kitchens and stables have many boys and girls Garia's age, but she won't meet any one from there for a long time.

Enter Merizel, who is almost as much a fish out of water as Garia is. Since she is obviously not of the palace, she and Garia end up bonding as they discover how everything works together.

It takes a little time, however, and there are several bumps along the way. For now, though, the young noblewoman is just overawed by being in the palace but wants to 'have a go' since this should, as she thinks, earn her bragging rights after she is inevitably asked to move on again.

As usual, I pulled the names of Merizel, her father Baron Kamodar and their demesne South Reach out of... wherever such things come from. I hadn't yet crystallized the naming rules and if I were to do this again (as if!) I would probably have named her Merizet. Still, it works fairly well as is.

Chamber colors

I gave Garia the Lilac chamber and subsequently Merizel gets the Cerise chamber next door. It since occurred to me that these are specific shades as used on Earth, so I'm assuming that the reader understands that these are local colors of perhaps similar shades. The actual colors aren't important.

Chapter 20, Of Type and Typing

After paper naturally comes printing and Garia gets off to an early start, not just with a basic press but also the typewriter. Fortunately the process is fairly simple to explain.

One major problem about describing an industrial revolution is that of describing various developments to the reader, who may or may not have much interest in the subject. Since this whole thing was supposed to be a romance I tried, really hard, to minimize the amount of unnecessary detail but inevitably I have given in and probably overdone things.

After printing and the typewriter Garia speaks with Margra about the human body, health and managing illness and accidents. There is a natural wariness from those around the table about such matters, just as there was in the 17th-18th centuries here, but Garia points out that they will be forced to dig deeper into how a body works if they want to make any progress.

Yod and Ferenis

At this point I had roughed out the layout of the Great Valley but had gone little further than that. Yod was obviously going to be the long-term enemy but I wasn't sure whether I wanted to introduce a full scale war (or even a small war) into the proceedings. Yod invading Ferenis is only the first step in whatever their plan was, and just incidentally allowed me to provide some more background about the world beyond the palace. Keren conveniently gets out all the maps and explains most of the important points.

The Daily Dispatch

By accident it seems that I ended up writing many of the chapters as one per elapsed day. There are important sequences where a day covers more than one chapter but one per day seems to be the norm. I became so comfortable writing the story this way that I really had to concentrate whenever I needed to skip time.

Doubtless I could have done it all that way but since the story covers a whole (Earth) year there would have been double the number of chapters. Many readers might have liked that but a lot of the chapters would have been blatant fillers. (And it possibly might have been another six years before I finished it!)

An upside of doing it this way is scene-setting: we find out what the weather is each day and what Garia thinks she will be doing. At the end of the day she mulls over what she has experienced and thinks about how she is changing and what the future might hold. I think this contributes to the way the book flows.

Chapter 21, Educating Merizel

A great opportunity for the author to have some light fun at Merizel's expense. She still has little clue about Garia and the younger girl's activities in the Small Training Room come as a complete shock. It also provides a convenient method for giving the reader more information about the Palace Guard and customs inside the palace.

Tobin and Torin

It just goes to show that, even after repeated careful and close scrutiny, some mistakes will still get through. After leaving the Self Defense Training Room Keren answers some questions from guardsmen in the bigger room. In the course of the same conversation I managed to change the name of a guardsman from Torin to Tobin, although it could charitably be argued that he was in fact speaking to two different guardsmen. This was not the case, so I have now corrected all references to be to Torin. Tobin, does in fact, remain on the roster.

Looming storm clouds

Later, there is another visit to the Wardrobe, where the first signs of Garia's instability begin to become apparent. As we are already aware that she has a temper the real reason is not obvious to anyone. She swears at Rosilda, which naturally mortifies her. Being brought up as a reasonably polite person it upsets Garia that she has begun behaving like this.

I have to apologize for using a swear word. I didn't want to make this story one that was full of crude words but felt that it was appropriate in this case to show just how much Garia's temper had flared up.

There are one or two swear words used later on but mostly I have just referenced them rather than committing them to print. I have invented one, used later by Sukhana, and considered thinking up more but again, I didn't want the speech to be peppered with too many such words. This is, after all, supposed to be a relatively polite society.

Chapter 22, Definitely Female

This is the first day of that inevitable feminine happening, the period, or, as the locals name it, the Call of Kalikan.

Garia has a brand new body which has never experienced anything like that previously. There has been a careful gloss over just how the clone body was grown and how fast, but it is entirely possible that it has never had that experience before coming to Anmar. Consequently, the interaction of hormones, etc, provides a fairly brutal introduction to womanhood.

Some non-TG female readers have mentioned the, to them, un-necessary emphasis on periods but I think that in story terms this can be justified. There are women who have bad periods and Garia happens to be one of them. Her Calls subsequently play a significant part in the overall story.

Importantly, in this chapter we come to see how everybody else considers this to be normal and how all the women around Garia and Terys contribute to help her through this difficult time. It provides an important bonding experience while making Garia realize that there are good reasons for the world of men and women to be the way it is.

Merizel has difficulty getting her head around the idea that somebody could be fifteen Anmar years old and never had a Call before. Having been dumped into a situation totally outside her experience she struggles to make sense of what she is being told.

Since Calls seem to be synchronized to Kalikan, as Earth women are to the Moon, I decided to stretch physiology a little further and make it an exact sync. In other words, Calls will come on the exact same day each month for every woman on Anmar. Of course, events like illness and childbearing would cause shifts but the general principle holds true. That is also one reason for the strange month system, though I have wondered whether a similar system would work better on Earth than what we have now.

At the end Garia comes to terms with her new existence but she still has the memories and drives of Gary Campbell. The process of assimilation will take some time longer before she is truly comfortable in her new skin. The trick for the author was easing her from one point of view to the other over the length of the story.

Author's Commentary on Somewhere Else Entirely: Chapters 23 to 26

Garia gets back to business and then receives her first major test.

There isn't too much in these chapters that required major attention.

Chapter 23, Bells and Black Rock

Garia is still recovering from her unexpected bodily function but still manages to find out more interesting things.

Unfinished business

Throughout this tale there are a number of dangling threads, from ideas which I thought might bear investigation but which were either forgotten in the flow or turned out to be not such a good idea. One such is the discovery of "odd items" in the clear-out of what will become The Self Defense Training Room. I had an idea that maybe something from Earth might turn up, or maybe a weapon from some distant enemy that the locals didn't even recognize as a weapon - but Garia might.

In the event that didn't happen but there are still odd threads like that left through the story. I decided that these shouldn't cause the average reader too much difficulty. In a closely-plotted story most of these would be either eliminated or resolved. Real Life isn't like that, and I wanted to make this story reflect the vagaries of what really happens as life goes along.

Lady and Milady

I made a slight mistake here which I ended up repeating throughout the whole story. The correct title for a noblewoman of the lowest rank is Lady and she should always be referred to that way when being introduced. Milady is a contraction of My Lady and is usually used in direct address once the speaker has been formally introduced.

I am correcting these as I go through the chapters which means that some of the conversations will have a slightly different flavor. This should not detract from the overall tone of the story, though.

Coal

With regard to the Industrial Revolution, coal is such an important item that it had to be introduced early in the process. What I hadn't realized was just how central it would become to the whole story. At this point I hadn't even sketched out any journey to the north so the significance of coal at this point was very small.

Chapter 24, Back to Business

There are surprises for all as Garia appears wearing her new exercise gear. I had not especially decided that her tunic and skirt would be the colors of the guard but that turned out to be a useful plot point in this and subsequent chapters.

Bodily Contact

This is the first time Garia and Keren have been in physical contact since her period and the additional hormones, now in full flow, make an uncomfortable change to the way they interact. This is really the first time that the two discover a physical attraction for one another, even if it hasn't become emotional yet.

Chapter 25, Beastly Encounter

I had always intended this encounter and the following fight, but in practice it occurred a little sooner than I would have preferred. On the other hand, it fitted in nicely with everything else that was happening and produced a demonstration which fundamentally changes the relationship between Garia and the Palace. Up until this point she has just been a stranger full of ideas but after the fight she really becomes one of the Royal Family, even if only adopted.

The Korond Gown

This is the gown 'lent' to Garia when she first arrives in the city. She wears it again here and then all mention of it goes quiet. This is another of those loose ends mentioned above. I do believe that it is subsequently described as being cleaned and then returned. There is no real significance in what happens to it, save that it caused a loose end.

Korond himself was only intended to be a casual mention in chapter 3. I was surprised and gratified to discover, much later, that his establishment would receive another visit, for very different reasons.

Chapter 26, A Matter of Honor

I had to choreograph two fights here, the first a verbal one at the breakfast table and then the physical one in the Large Training Room. The first was actually harder here because it was necessary to maneuvre everybody around to the consequence I wanted, which was that Jarwin would somehow throw down a challenge to Garia, thus giving her the choice of weapons.

Jarwin uses the word cow here, and one or two readers have questioned it. However, milk appears to be available in Palarand and therefore at least one kind of mammal must produce it. I have carefully not explained the exact details of the origin of local milk but I think the use of the word cow is permissible.

I had forgotten, even while writing this chapter, that in this society no man would ever challenge a woman, and so it was also necessary to twist things in order to get the right result. Fortunately for me and for the story, Jarwin did all that I asked of him.

The physical fight went off more or less as expected. I did have some trouble figuring out Garia's and Jarwin's lefts and rights and I have made some tiny adjustments here. Otherwise I think things resolved themselves as expected. Garia is no Mary Sue, she suffers injuries like any other 15 year-old Anmarian girl would.

Author's Commentary on Somewhere Else Entirely: Chapters 27 to 30

Garia recovers after her first major test. We learn more about Anmar as she becomes more comfortable with life in the palace.

Chapter 27, Aftermath

Garia recovers after her bout and then has to face Merizel. I knew that she would have to have minor injuries but I didn't want anything too serious since time would pass while she healed and time was in short supply. I think what she did get was a good compromise, even though I eventually forgot about her hand...

This of course is Garia's story and I think this might have been the first time that I followed another character for any length of time. It is a technique sometimes used and it can add to the atmosphere, especially when you are seeing events or reactions from someone else's point of view. In this case it was Merizel, summoned to the Queen's Sitting Room and not knowing what was going on. Suffice it to say that explanations are provided and peace made. Merry's companionship to Garia is an important aspect of her adjustment to her new circumstances.

In the evening, Garia begins to organize the way she will teach the Guard her version of unarmed combat. Unfortunately for her and for me, her injuries from her bout with Jarwin prevent that happening immediately. I would have preferred for her to make her first-ever test a little later in the tale but that was not to be.

In the evening she talks about police and armies and then realizes that she really doesn't want Anmar to have firearms. Keren points out that they will probably arrive anyway so foreknowledge could be a good thing.

Chapter 28, Girls, Guards and Gossip

Garia has to address the men of the guard, the day after her bout with Jarwin. I did think of making more of this but decided that less was probably more. After this she is left with six of the ten men she will train as instructors.

I made a mistake here but decided to turn it to good use. Garia doesn't want everyone to use her rank while she is teaching them, and if she had been on her own it would probably have worked. Having both the Prince and Merizel there makes things feel awkward to the men, though. This is resolved in the next chapter with a suggestion that turns out to satisfy everyone.

Backsides, asses (or arses) and butts

I wasn't sure what term to use here. I didn't want anything too crude or too obviously American English, which naturally the locals wouldn't use. I compromised with 'backside'. There are one or two other examples like this throughout the story where I felt that it was necessary to find neutral words.

Feteran

At this point in the story he is just another guardsman. I had no idea then what he would later become or who his father would turn out to be. Aside from a vague idea that there was to be a journey north, I had made no plans at all. I hadn't even realized at this point that Garia would be made a noble, which would bring with it a need for her own armsmen.

The color green

It is never explicitly stated anywhere, but I decided that Garia would favor the color green and this shows up throughout the story. Like everyone she will wear other colors, but a definite preference began to emerge with her visit to the Wardrobe with Merizel. Merizel, of course, is delighted to be let loose among rails of gowns.

Chapter 29, Of Gods and Magic

After agreeing to let the men call her 'Teacher' they go into the other room to look at weapons. Garia isn't going to be able to handle a normal sword but she has to find out the hard way. Mention is made of the Royal Master-at-Arms and it was inevitable there there would be a conflict there, however, I didn't want it to happen the same way as previous confrontations.

The Knife Trick

This is another running gag throughout the story. Although later on Garia does disarm somebody with a kick the 'knife trick' is mentioned every so often but never actually explained. "Obvious, really."

The use of telescopes is mentioned at her next meeting with Gerdas. I had forgot to make Garia give him a warning about not looking at the sun previously so made up for it here. That is one of the perils with publishing as you go.

Optics

I decided to get them started on the basics of optics, as they would be useful as various technologies developed later on. At that point I only wanted to introduce the subject, there was never any intention of going much further. Later on in SEE there is a mention of how the steel producers are using a crude spectrograph to assay their output. In What Milsy Did #16 we see such an instrument being used.

The laboratory

That was one of the more obvious things that would happen, since Garia (and subsequently Milsy) would need some space to do experiments and give demonstrations. Unfortunately, that introduced further complications when I remembered just what condition the study was in. However, making a virtue out of a problem allowed me subsequently to have a little fun at Keren's expense.

Neither the Laboratory not the study ever gets completely cleaned the way it should have been. This is partly because those who end up doing the job are all too young to really know what to do with what they find. However, this does leave space for 'chance finds', such as when not one but two antique pistols are discovered much later under a bench.

Gods and Magic

I had decided from the start that this would be a tale based more or less in the real universe, using only plot devices that could be explained by scientific methods. (Although at this point I had only vaguely hinted at the Beings and had no idea how that might work out in practice.) That meant that there would be no supernatural beings such as gods, demigods, demons and the rest nor any kind of magic in the sense of using spells or special objects, for example.

Granted, the Beings themselves have "powers", if you like, but though they could be considered godlike to humans I chose not to make them operate in that way. In the back of my mind was a great danger; I had not yet decided what it would be.

Balloons

I thought of introducing balloons, especially as they have an obvious application to warfare, but decided later that I didn't need that complication. Here they just get a bare mention as a possibility in Garia's mind.

Of course, Garia has a lot inside her mind and it is natural that she has to pick and choose what to tell the locals. First of all, though, she has to remember things to tell them and it is always going to be hit and miss.

Chapter 30, Morlan's Laboratory

The final four trainees turn up for Garia's classes and two of them have physical attributes that make an impression on her at an animal level. Sometimes, as with Jarwin, a man will affect her at a physical level who she would not otherwise be attracted to. Fortunately for her, Maxilar is a narcissist and Benith is gay. Since she can be so affected, she is concerned for her own vulnerability.

Merizel is man-mad at this point and discusses the group of trainees with Garia. It is apparent that Garia will eventually need to find a mate for herself but she has no idea how she will go about this in the future - especially in a society where courtship is handled differently. Since she has not had a female upbringing, and this society is so different anyway, she wonders how she will manage.

"A few weeks back"

When I originally wrote this I had no Timeline. I had written very few notes at this point, preferring to kep most of it in my head. I had not counted back just how long ago the original kidnap attempt had occurred but assumed it had been a decent while previously. There were a number of occasions where I made references to past acts but hadn't thought it important enough to count back the days.

Then things began to get out of hand and, once Julia began writing her tale, it became necessary to actually do the hard work of figuring out exactly when everything had happened. That was the point the Timeline was developed, along with things like the month names and order, dates of arrival and possible departure, festival dates and so on.

Now, going back through the chapters it is necessary to do something about all those vague references. Imagine my surprise when I looked at Merry's comment and then checked back... to find what I thought was several weeks turns out to be sixteen days. So, "a few weeks back" becomes "a week or so back".

We're working with people's memories here and the recent past has been action packed, so I think that the inaccuracy in her comment is fair enough, whereas to say "a few weeks" would be less credible. For that reason, not all of the back references made in the story will necessarily be changed the same way.

Cleaning Gear

This was an obvious opportunity to have some fun at Keren's expense. Yolda's reaction was predictable but the fact that Garia and Jenet already had cleaning dresses was fortuitous. Keren is initially furious then angry but sees Garia's logic so has to give in. Of course, we all know that he's never going to get away with it...

Fluffy Dusters on Sticks

I had to think hard about this seeming tiny detail. There are no feathers on Anmar, so there can be no feather dusters. Likewise, references to quills had to be changed to reeds where appropriate.

The Antikythera Device

Finding this is a significant moment, since it proves to Garia that there is some kind of link between Anmar and Earth, and that she is not the first person to have made the journey. This is explored in following chapters.

Author's Commentary on Somewhere Else Entirely: Chapters 31 to 34

Garia recovers after her first major test. We learn more about Anmar as she becomes more comfortable with life in the palace.

Chapter 31, Cleaning Crew

Garia explains the Antikythera machine to the council and several conclusions are drawn. Now that the story had been running for a while I had time to consider such matters as: how she got to Anmar, who brought her there and why. Several ideas had been running through my head but eventually the story itself suggested a way forward, hence the machine. Garia knows she has to be a copy (else she would have his original male body) so it is reasonable to suggest that her belongings, and therefore the belongings of others, are also copies. What has happened to the originals is still open to question at this point.

Robanar mulls over ways to give Garia some kind of status that would provide her with personal security of all kinds. The Harvest Festival seemed a suitable time to make that change but I still hadn't decided what she would become or realized what the side effects would entail.

Kereena

Inevitably, a footman manages to get into Morlan's quarters while they are cleaning and Garia and Keren have to think quickly to avoid an embarrassing incident. Although exposure is averted the incident comes back to haunt them later that day.

Leading Guardsman/File Leader

I hadn't really thought about the ranks and organization of the Palace Guard (not the Royal Guard!) since I didn't think it would be relevant. What did I know? I used the term Leading Guardsman here, when Bleskin and Merek meet Garia to discuss arrangements for the festival. I have changed that to the term I would use later, File Leader, which rank is approximately equivalent to that of Sergeant.

Boiler Suits

Another problem of nomenclature here. What I was thinking of was a garment that covered the whole body, with attached sleeves and legs and did up the front. I called it by the name I was familiar with, namely, a boiler suit.

It occurred to me afterwards that in the US they might use a different name, or that boiler suit might describe something different. I have therefore also used the terms coveralls and overalls in this story and in What Milsy Did. The description which follows the naming here is reasonably thorough so the reader should form the correct impression.

Unfortunately I suspect that naming of such garments varies according to where you are and in which country.

"We'll have a wonderful time, I just know it!"

Yeah, right. This is probably a standard literary device but it seemed right to put it here. If only they knew then...

Chapter 32, Meet the Neighbors

This begins with cleaning Morlan's study and attempting to organize the contents. There was an opportunity here to "find" things that might advance the plot but as things transpired I didn't need to make use of anything like that.

Bursila's discovery of apparently blank sheets with secret writing was one of those. In the event the plot moved in a different direction.

Garia's wrist injury

While writing this I completely forgot that Garia had injured her wrist during the fight with Jarwin (so did she). That would have made the climbing up and down of stepladders a little difficult. However, it was never intended to be a really serious injury and about enough time has elapsed for her (and me) to have forgotten about it. Then she throws Marlin...

Brikant and Kendeven

Merizel explains how Brikant and Kendeven became part of Palarand after the Sirrel washed away the link to North Palarand. Although she explains that they were renamed 'Upper Palarand' and 'Lower Palarand' it seems that in practice I just kept calling them Brikant and Kendeven. Given the older names are more distinctive it made sense and creates less confusion for the reader.

It was time to broaden the information concerning the surrounding regions and this seemed a good way to do it. I didn't know then how important some of those places and characters would come to be. When I wrote this, it was just an opportunity for Garia's development and finding her place in this society.

Marlin

This was a chance to introduce some more characters of about the same age as Garia and Keren. Of course, they are all nobles so to begin with, don't know what to make of her.

One of the visitors had to be awkward. Marlin isn't actually evil, he just wants things to stay the way they always have done in the past. He knows nothing about Garia or what she might represent and their first meeting inevitably led to a clash. I wasn't sure at this point what was going to happen but there were already some pointers for the future.

Chapter 33, Royal Deliberations

There has been a certain inevitable 'flexibility' in the travel times reported during this part of the story. That was partly because I hadn't yet finalized a map of the Great Valley or Northern Palarand. This means that certain journeys seem to be very quick or somewhat slow when considering the distances involved. To fix them all would probably involve a significant amount of rewriting (because people would depart or arrive on the wrong days, for example) so I've just decided to put it all down to 'artistic license' (or slower or faster frayen and dranakh).

Grakh

This is the first mention of a particular Anmar beast that appears occasionally throughout the tale. I had already decided that it was going to be a variety of pterosaur large enough to prey on humans or frayen. How a beast that disappeared 66 million years ago on Earth got to Anmar was another mystery to be explained. It was always intended that they would play an important part towards the end of the story.

Promotion

It was apparent, for several reasons, that Garia would end up with some kind of noble title. Robanar enumerates the reasons in a later chapter but as a young girl giving her a minimum title would offer her some protection. I was fully aware at this point of the 'unintended consequences' - as seen from her viewpoint - but was prepared to deal with them.

If you have ever read David Weber's Honor Harrington series you'll know that the heroine there also gets an entirely unexpected noble title. This not only comes with duties but also baggage in the shape of armsmen, property and accounts. I haven't gone down the exact same path but I have used certain of the basic ideas from there in this story.

When I wrote this chapter I still had no idea what Robanar was going to do at the Harvest Festival!

Chapter 34, Loose Ends

Garia attempts to have a meeting of the young nobles but finds that the space in her sitting room is too tight. This leads her to consider other places they might go in the future. She attempts to describe what she is and where she comes from, with limited success. The nobles can barely comprehend much of what she tells them. Marlin is his usual grumpy self.

The palace is so full of people that there is nowhere for Keren and Garia to demonstrate their martial arts. This was fine, right up until the point I realized that the said martial arts would have to be displayed at some point, in front of the senior nobles. I solved that problem later in a different way.

In the meantime, they have to find an alternative venue and Garia suggests Morlan's sitting room. Garia goes through her story yet again but Marlin still has reservations. I wanted him to be a different kind of obstacle to those she has found among the palace staff. I also didn't want everybody to accept Garia at face value.

Lunch

For the first time, Garia considers her long-term future in Palarand. She is in a society with very different rules and expectations than Gary experienced on Earth. She is forced, for the first time, to seriously think of marrying a boy to keep her position regular in the future.

For this tale, I didn't consider the alternative. I had already decided the basic premise of the plot which was that she would eventually marry the Prince. I know there are some who dislike any apparent shift in sexuality coming from a gender swap but this is different, since she has the right body for what will be required. There are gays and lesbians on Anmar, we just haven't encountered any of them - yet.

Terissa and Dalenna

Another opportunity to have a little gentle fun. This continues whenever they appear in the story. Of course, at the point I wrote them in I had no idea that my first grandchildren would be twin girls!

Dancing and Singing

Since Robanar's brother has turned up, it is an excuse for a banquet followed by some music and dancing. As on previous occasions Garia suffers the music and doesn't know any of the dance steps anyway, so has to sit them all out. That, coupled with too much wine to try and deaden the music, makes her incautious enough to begin to sing.

I wasn't sure what to get her to sing at first but the answer became obvious as something most readers would recognize. Way to get herself too much attention! I didn't know whether to make this an ongoing feature or not but eventually decided that Garia's natural caution would make her refuse any future requests to sing in public.