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Posts by Pam Uphoff

May 17

15 Comments

Stretching Reality

Yeah, I write SF/F but that’s not quite what I mean.

Writers get information from a wide variety of sources, the best one of which is their own life and experiences. And from what you’ve done . . . you extrapolate that out and into the fictional world you are creating.

It starts early, as early as your childhood experiences and memories. Family, friends, school, the Bad Kids, Car trips with the parents.

Pets, the dogs and cats you grew up with. Horses you’ve ridden and owned. Horse shows, your favorite trails. Yeah, I use horses a lot, you’ve probably noticed. Read more

Apr 19

64 Comments

Do you have a moment to talk about our savior?

Do you have a moment to talk about our savior?

You do? That’s too bad, because I am absolutely the wrong person to talk about religion. Even in fiction.

Church didn’t happen in my childhood, so it tends to get overlooked in my fiction.

But here it is. An iconic cathedral badly damaged a few days ago. Today is Good Friday. And Passover. Sunday is Easter, Monday is Earth Day, and Wednesday, according to my calendar, is Administrative Professionals Day.

So I’m going to fumble around a bit about religion in completely fictional worlds.

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Mar 15

18 Comments

Collections

Why on God’s Green Earth am I creating a collection of my stories?

Well, you see, I had all these three quarters written stories, all in my Wine of the Gods series, but I’d written and published past them. And my numbering is mixed up enough already thank you. Read more

Feb 15

24 Comments

Spark It Up

Is your book dry and old?

Spark it up with some romance.

No, not the Romance Genre.

I’m thinking about how to add a romantic thread to a story in whatever other genre the book belongs in. So I’m inflicting my thoughts on you. Read more

Jan 18

45 Comments

Conversions and Culture Clashes

Conversions and Culture Clashes

“Ah! A balmy twenty degrees out!” He eyed the kids, grabbing for their parkas . . . “Umm, that’s almost seventy degrees for you Fahrenheit troglodytes. Beautiful day out there.”

So my main audience is American, but I have readers in Europe, Japan, Australia, Canada . . . and even the younger Americans are comfortable with most metric terms. They have an instinctive grasp of how large four meters is, they don’t have to think about “why is he getting a ladder?”

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Dec 21

35 Comments

Let’s Make a World

 

A friend was bemoaning the necessity of making a world the other day. Now, since I happen to think that is one of the fun parts of pre-planning a story, I found his reluctance baffling. So I decided to think about how to do such a thing in a methodical fashion.

With my gaming dice.  😀

Now, first and foremost are the plot requirements of the story that’s being planned. They can load the dice at any point, including backing up and rerolling four steps ago.

So let’s start with the big picture.

A star, or stars. Roll a die. Read more

Nov 16

45 Comments

Reality Check

Track sales, look for trends, they said.

Shudder.

But I did it anyway, and the take away is pretty straight forward. Being a visual type, I graphed it. This is the total sales in the first two months after it was published, in the order the books were published.

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