We Write!
[--- Karen Myers ---] No story teller wants to have to describe his fictional world setting molecule by molecule, and no reader wants to slog through that. The way we avoid it is by incorporating worlds we already know as part of our fictional world. Even the most alien speculative world has elements that our... Continue Reading →
Alma T. C. Boykin Anyone who has read my books, especially the Merchant series and the stand-alone Chinese story, knows that I am a compulsive researcher. I wouldn't have survived two graduate degrees in history without suffering from this affliction. Or perhaps reveling in it. However, there are limits to what you need to write... Continue Reading →
So I'm going to give you a couple awesome links for your day. First, Dr. Jackson Crawford. Who, thanks to the awesomeness of the modern age, is a Norse language and myth scholar who's supported by patreon, so he can cover the most interesting topics! https://youtu.be/IROvre0w6hc Second, Dr Travis Lee Clark! Who is an awesome... Continue Reading →
It's OK. Deities happen to the best of us. There you are, standing by the corner of your desk, minding your own business, when ZOT! a character gets religion. Oh dear. How awkward. Now what? For a while, science fiction in particular was supposed to be faith-free. Oh, the character might use a deity name... Continue Reading →
Karen's post yesterday inspired me to do some serious thinking about how I'm handling worldbuilding in the WIP. (Note: this is not the same as seriously inspired thinking. Alas.) It's another Regency fantasy set in the imaginary world of Din Eidyn, which I think of as what Edinburgh would have been like at the time... Continue Reading →
Alma T. C. Boykin So, you found a cool place in history and want to play with it. What if . . . Roland had not been killed in battle? What if . . . Charlemagne's grandsons had not divided up the empire? What if . . . the internal combustion engine had not been... Continue Reading →
'World to end on Monday. Women and minorities most affected.' Anyone ever worked this one out: besides that it is the reliable Grauniad headline... this time too? It only works, of course, if the men aren't there. And, oddly, that is the case in this 'writer income ' Graun piece too. But let me explain.... Continue Reading →
Since I’ve just finished a historical fantasy novel (the one I’ve been calling Book of Secrets, but now it’s Shadow of the Crescent) set in Italy and Constantinople in 1480-81, I enjoyed the recent column here on historical fiction and had so many thoughts that I decided to save them for a separate post instead... Continue Reading →
It's a genre that waxes and wanes in popularity, although dramatizations of kings and queens seems to be very popular at the moment. Historical fiction goes back to the first time someone tried to imagine what it must have been like when . . . In a way, the Illiad is historical fiction, because the... Continue Reading →
There's the brilliant scene in Alice in Wonderland where she is falling, ever so gently, into Wonderland via a rabbit's hole. The rabbit-hole went straight on like a tunnel for some way, and then dipped suddenly down, so suddenly that Alice had not a moment to think about stopping herself before she found herself falling... Continue Reading →
Mad Genius Club 