Meta-Conversations: A Light Touch (Patreon)

The Calligrapher rests a hand on my wrist, startling me out of my concentration lock on the screen. “Don’t,” he says gently, “overdo it, datyani.”

He’s never yet called me that, which finishes off my focus on what I was doing. I give him my full attention.

“You do not add ornament with these,” he says. The spread on the screen shows Ereseya’s quote from Black Blossom as I originally scribbled it, hastily, in the car, at a stop light. “You add meaning. To add too much of it would overburden the text. It is not the same, as when you are embellishing with decoration. You must grant it to the text sparingly. Stop now, and see how it looks in the hand before you make any further decisions.”

“All right,” I stammer. And remember to incline my head. “Thank you.”

He smiles, amused. “Don’t finish that. I do not Correct, I teach. Very different.”

“Yes, sir,” I answer, smiling back.

***

As you can see, I have finally gotten around to collecting the Ai-Naidari meta-conversations I posted on Livejournal for those of you who miss them, and apparently a lot of you do because I’ve gotten multiple requests for this book…! And it is a book, shockingly. I thought it would be a sliver of a thing the size of The Aphorisms, but the spine was wide enough to startle me when I got the template back.

This will be the first book of the Conversations, covering seven years of material, most of it lost with Livejournal. I’ve interspersed it with my handwritten notes or quick sketches from the same time period, where I thought they were relevant (and not too many, as Farren says). I’m waiting for the proof to arrive, but once I have a look-see I’ll be sending this one to retail in both print and e-book. And of course, I’ll tell you when it’s available.

The later meta-conversations will go into a future second volume, so don’t worry, there will be more of these! And as always, thanks for telling me what you want. I don’t always see it myself, obviously…!