Any news from Honorcon 2017?

Title says it all. Any news to share?

GregD wrote:Title says it all. Any news to share?

Really? There's not one bit of information from HonorCon?

Don't look at me! I don't get to go until next year. I'm sitting here just like you, sniffing for any crumbs of info that might drop my way.

roseandheather wrote:Don't look at me! I don't get to go until next year. I'm sitting here just like you, sniffing for any crumbs of info that might drop my way.

I believe
David did mention in one panel that he enjoyed your stream of email reactions as you read through the manuscript...

But as for news, I can't really thing of any. The issue with being at the end of the current arc is that there's not much to announce. Didn't get an update of House of Lies release. We know when A Call to Vengeance and Uncompromising Honor are releasing. Sometime after House of Lies there may be a companion on the League, but no timeline was given.

David talked a bit about all the projects he's committed to or wants to work on, but don't recall any news there on the Honorverse (nor a month later do I recall the details)


He did talk a bit about his original scene for Raoul meeting Alison's mother, after Honor was killed in the Battle of Manticore - why Alison would have been estranged from her parents, why Honor never got to meet them, and why Raoul barely knew of their existence. And then when his great grandmother sees Raul's eyes, and that looked like Alison's she has a revelation that her stubbornness meant she never got to meet Honor; and that shakes her. (Mind you, David did a much better job sketching this out that I'm doing trying to recall and paraphrase it). There were some calls for (and popular support of) him to eventually somehow publish all these written but 'never happened' scenes that got preempted by twists in the novels; since apparently he's got them lying around on the hard drive.

Jonathan_S wrote:He did talk a bit about his original scene for Raoul meeting Alison's mother, after Honor was killed in the Battle of Manticore - why Alison would have been estranged from her parents, why Honor never got to meet them, and why Raoul barely knew of their existence. And then when his great grandmother sees Raul's eyes, and that looked like Alison's she has a revelation that her stubbornness meant she never got to meet Honor; and that shakes her. (Mind you, David did a much better job sketching this out that I'm doing trying to recall and paraphrase it). There were some calls for (and popular support of) him to eventually somehow publish all these written but 'never happened' scenes that got preempted by twists in the novels; since apparently he's got them lying around on the hard drive.

Do you have the right characters in that bit? It doesn't seem right.

I can quite understand that RFC may be too busy to do much posting or snippeting and am glad that he is well enough to be at Honorcon and Navycon. But, since he is well enough to do those things, I am disappointed that he has just dropped out of the forums again and abandoned the promised set of snippets, without even taking three minutes to drop off a note saying, "Sorry there will be a pause for a couple of months (or whatever) due to too much work at the moment." However busy he is, he had said three minutes available sometime in the last 6 weeks.

d-eye wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:He did talk a bit about his original scene for Raoul meeting Alison's mother, after Honor was killed in the Battle of Manticore - why Alison would have been estranged from her parents, why Honor never got to meet them, and why Raoul barely knew of their existence. And then when his great grandmother sees Raul's eyes, and that looked like Alison's she has a revelation that her stubbornness meant she never got to meet Honor; and that shakes her. (Mind you, David did a much better job sketching this out that I'm doing trying to recall and paraphrase it). There were some calls for (and popular support of) him to eventually somehow publish all these written but 'never happened' scenes that got preempted by twists in the novels; since apparently he's got them lying around on the hard drive.

Do you have the right characters in that bit? It doesn't seem right.

In the original original timeline David envisioned he said (as best I recall) that Allison Benton-Ramirez y Chou had to defy her family to marry Alfred - they, and especially her mother, viewed it as throwing away her position and potential to move to a backwater (Sphinx). Effectively ostracized her.

And Alison is holding a bit of a grudge, and doesn't want Honor contaminated with the Ramirez y Chou's overweening sense of superiority - doesn't want her introduced to that life of power and privileged. So basically doesn't talk about her family on Beowulf, much less have Honor meet them. And then Honor dies (mirroring Horatio Nelson) in the battle of Manticore (Trafalger) saving the Kingdom. (Oh, and that scene apparently would have happened exactly like we found out McKeon had died. A call to the flagship after the battle only to be told that the flag bridge had taken a direct his and McKean/Honor hadn't survived- David said he just flipped Honor's ship and McKeon's in those BoM scenes when he decided Honor had to live.

So Honor never got to meet her Beowulf relatives, my impression is the books wouldn't do more than lay out a few breadcrumbs about how important they were on Beowulf until long after Honor died; once her son Raoul joined the navy. Then as the conflict with the Mesan Alignment (remember, now 30 or so years later than it ended up happening in the books) Mantie diplomatic services comes to <rank I can't recall if David mentioned> Rauol Allexander-Harrington and basically says "Hey, you're related to some of the high-ups over on Beowolf (a surprise to him and a surprise to any reader who missed the scattered breadcrumbs) and we need you to use your familial connections to help get Beowulf on board that this Mesan conspiracy exists and must be dealt with." That's the setup for the scene of him meeting his great grandmother that I mentioned.

Obviously that idea had been changed fairly early on. David decided that the Ramirez y Chous were much nicer people, and Beowulf and Manticore would have a better relationship. That's where we get bits in the book about Honor learning classic firearms from her Beowulfan Uncle, and Alison talking about being 'one of those' Ramirez y Chous. But he said he had to carefully go back through the earlier books to make sure that he hadn't written anything to nasty about them based on his original idea -- and fortunately he hadn't so he was able to change course invisibly to the reader.

But he'd still envisioned and written the scene (that now can never happen) of Raoul and Allison's mother.

Jonathan_S wrote:snip...

But he'd still envisioned and written the scene (that now can never happen) of Raoul and Allison's mother.

IIRC there has been no mention of Honor meeting any of her mothers relative other than Uncle Jacques, so there is the chance that Allison could still be estranged from her mother and the meeting between Raul and his great-grandmother could happen and bring about reconciliation.

Any news on what he's working on now? I'd assume it's Safehold, but any word from Himself would be neat.