At 07:05 PM 6/5/2002 -0400, Beldarrin at aol.com wrote: > And to change the subject once more (and this is directed to Mr. > Steve), one is curious as to why you decided to write "Athyra" in third > person, and why "Orca" volleys back and forth between Vlad and Kiera. I don't think I can give a fully satisfying answer to that question. Part of it is this: When I finished Phoenix, I thought I might be done with Vlad. But I kept getting this image of Vlad walking into a bar, wearing a pancho, smoking a cheroot, with a Sergio Leone soundtrack. The image wouldn't go away, so I wrote Athyra to exorcise it, and there was just no way get that feel in first person. Another part of the answer is that there were machinations going on in Orca that Vlad just wouldn't have seen, and that I needed the reader to see. Also, I wanted to see if I could pull off the Kiera/Sethra thing while spending a lot of time in Kiera's head. I don't know. There's a reasonable argument that "the story" is a different thing from "how the story is told." But when I'm working on it, I can't separate them. Those stories had to be told that way, or they just wouldn't have worked for me. See? I told you the answer wouldn't be satisfying. > Oh, and on a rather ridiculous-sounding note, if you had to convert > imperials into U.S. dollars, what would an imperial be worth? That's > something (rather insignificant, true) I was just wondering about... The answer that jumps into my head is, of course, $17 to the Imperial. But that won't hold up because of cultural differences. Let's say Vlad earns $1500 imperials. In our terms, that would be about $25,000. Okay, you have $25,000. You go out to a fairly decent restaurant. You spend $25, or 1/1000th of the income. That same meal would cost Vlad about 3 or 4 Orbs, or, say, 1/3500 of the income (I think my math is right: 1 orb = 1/17th of an imperial). You decide to buy a pair of good boots. You might spend $250, or 1/100th of the income. Vlad might have to spend forty or fifty imperials for good boots, or 1/30th of the income. You see the problem? Things don't match up.