It’s About Making Babies!

Booking Through Thursday offers a writing challenge.

#
# Pick up the nearest book. (I’m sure you must have one nearby.)
# Turn to page 123.
# What is the first sentence on the page?
# The last sentence on the page?
# Now . . . connect them together….

Now, the first book to hand is .. The Masterharper of Pern, by Anne McCaffrey, Del Rey, 1998. p123 ..

The Weyr might not have a highly trained harper, but there were a lot of good voices and folk who picked up quickly on tune and chorus.

S’loner was pleased with the class. Smithing was hard work, and the young boys and girls were hanging in there pretty well. Today’s diversion into the ’song of the blacksmith’ played out on their practice anvils was .. interesting. John and Henry (as usual!) wanted to use larger sledges that the usual work tools. But the lesson was on rhythm and control, not the loudest ring nor deepest pitch.

At the end of class, John and Henry both stayed to ask for a chance with larger sledges, while trying to hide the muscle aches and weariness from using the class tools.

“.. Well, Soon enough, soon enough. . .” S’loner was saying as the two boys left for the Lower Caverns.

That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it. Wait, that was a song, not a book. Well, maybe next time..

Booking through Thursday poses a different question this week:

How about a chance to play editor-in-chief? Fill in the blanks:

__________ would have been a much better book if ______________________.

Mike Shepherd’s Kris Longknife: Resolute, published by Penguin, would have been a much better book if the author hadn’t dwelled on the ‘booby bomb’ gimmick from the second Kris Longknife book, Deserter.

Using bra padding as an explosive worked well for the Deserter book - cute, not too contrived. In this 4th book, though, the gag grew thin.

Shepherd also needs to tone down some of the angst aspects of the lead character. Yes, she would prefer to avoid the entanglements of family, politics, and becoming ‘princess’ and heir apparent to her interstellar empire. But the series is an action story, not soul-searching philosophy of a contrived situation. Dwelling on the angst of role conflicts seems to be the weakest parts of this book and the series.

But I do like the retro Aunt Tru and the cookies. The worst part of this series, is I misplaced the second book. Which interrupted my fourth re-reading of the sequence (four titles so far). Grr. I just ordered Kris Longknife: Audacious, the next Kris Longknife book.