Friday, March 18th, 2011 I’ve been giving a lot of thought to world building these days, as I’m slated to teach a class at an upcoming convention. In simple terms, world building is all about setting the scene for your story or novel.
If you write contemporary literature, you may not need to do so much. If you write science fiction or fantasy, you’ll need to be aware of all the differences between the world you’re writing, and the world you live in, so you can make the fictional world believable when you write it.
Mainly, you have to make certain that things, “work.” If it rains blue raisins every night, you’ll need a plausible reason for this phenomena and write it convincingly into the story. And there needs to be balance. For every really cool item you place in the world, you’ve got to have an equally evil or devastating one.
Balance makes the story/world more believable: too much happiness and light and things get boring fast. Too much evil and darkness, and we’re left with no enjoyment, no hope.
Naomi Novik writes stories set in the Napoleonic era where dragons exist. Kim Harrison’s urban fantasies take place in current-day Ohio, where all kinds of supernatural beings exist and tomatoes are thought to be deadly.
What kind of stories could you tell about these kinds of worlds?
Here’s Your Prompt: Create a world, much like your own, with one significant difference. Like Novik’s world, it could be the existence of dragons (or some other mythical creature). Or, like Harrison’s world, it could be that a common plant is considered dangerous. Can you imagine a world without ketchup?
On the flip side, it could be a world without a particular animal or “luxury” item. For example, what if horses didn’t exist? What if airplanes or trains or automobiles had never been invented?
Or build a world where tomatoes (or another plant) are found to cure cancer, Alzheimer’s or some other disease. (This is where balance comes in: if you can cure cancer, there’d better be some other disease or illness or birth defect that people have to struggle with.)
One you’ve built this small piece of your world, think of ways the setting can be used to generate a story idea. What kind of people live in this world? What do they believe? How do they live? How does the setting affect them?
Wednesday, March 16th, 2011  I heard the news a few days ago, but it’s now been officially announced, and I can do a public happy dance.
Bad Ass Faeries 3: In All Their Glory won the 2011 EPIC Award for Best Anthology.
My story, Selk-Skin Deep appears within its covers.
It’s an alternate history that takes place during the Vietnam War, when President Kennedy first created the Navy SEALs program. In my story, Cade Owen is not only a SEAL, but a Selkie, who’s been assigned duty on the aircraft carrier USS Livingstone in the Gulf of Tonkin.
(Tangent gave my story a nice review, for which I was pleased. I mentioned it in this post previously. You can still read the first five pages of Selk Skin Deep if you’re interested.)
Congrats to editors Danielle Ackley-McPhail, L. Jagi Lamplighter, Lee C. Hillman, and Jeffrey Lyman; and, congrats to all the authors: D.C. Wilson, Hildy Silverman, Chris Pisano & Brian Koscienski, Trisha Wooldridge & Christy Tohara, Lee C. Hillman, Robert E. Waters, Bernie Mojzes, C.J. Henderson, James Daniel Ross, Darren W. Pearce & Neal Levin, Jeffrey Lyman, L. Jagi Lamplighter, me (!), Jason Franks, Patrick Thomas, David Lee Summers, David Sherman, Elaine Corvidae, James Chambers, John L. French, and Danielle Ackley-McPhail.
Monday, March 14th, 2011 Two Pi interludes in one day, how kewl is that?
Lauren Jackson of the Pacific Northwest Librarians sent me a link to a very fine infographic about Pi (below). I had to share. (It’s had me giggling all the while I’m typing this.)
To let blog readers who may not follow me on Facebook in on the joke: I’m giggling because it comes on the heels of a Facebook post I made earlier today about an infographic on infographics:
Here’s the infographic on infographics in case you’re wondering. The Pi graphic isn’t nearly as colorful, but it’s chock-full of geeky math goodness. That’s a hit in my book.
Thanks, Lauren!
Source: Visualizing Pi
You can see a larger version of the Pi infographic by clicking on it.
Monday, March 14th, 2011  It’s here! March 14. It’s Pi Day.
(Get it? The date is 314.)
I talked a little bit about it in this Pi post last year.
For the uninitiated:
The Greek letter Pi is the symbol for the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. It’s celebrated on March 14, (3/14) because the first few digits of Pi are 3.14. Pi is unique because it’s the only fraction which does not repeat.
The folks over at Pi Day.org have links to Pi’s first million digits. Very cool.
Three years in a row, the blog 360 (a very cool math blog) posted a Pi Sudoku. Not this year. But here are links to previous pages:
Pi Sudoku 2008
Pi Sudoku 2009
Pi Sudoku 2010
Check out this link:
http://3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510582097.org/
(It doesn’t link to any really nifty math stuff, unfortunately, but the URL is still pretty kewl, no?)
And here’s a wonderful page called the Joy of Pi which has tons of very fun Pi links.
I’m off to read about Pi and the Fibonnaci Numbers.
Happy Pi Day!
p.s. Today is also Albert Einstein’s birthday…he didn’t discover Pi, but he’s geeky coolness unto himself.
Friday, March 11th, 2011
High Rock Overlook is located just south of the Mason Dixon Line in Washington County, Maryland. It’s a special landmark for several reasons: it’s on the Appalachian Trail, a “landmark” in its own right; it overlooks the “Great Valley,” which spans parts of Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania; and it’s near the divide where water on one side of the mountain flows into Antietam Creek (through the valley below) and into the Monocacy River on the other side.
But I just like it for the view.
Standing on the top of the rock, you can see 1400 feet below you. You have to look down to see the eagles flying. When I’m at the edge of the rock, feeling a bit of an updraft, I have an urge to take a running leap off the precipice and fly with them.
Great views will do that to you: inspire you, engender feelings you didn’t think you would have, offer comfort, scare you. Make you wonder: what if ?
Here’s Your Prompt: Dig though your vacation or your day-trip photos looking for pictures of scenic views, ocean storms, cityscapes, anything. Turn pages in albums or flip through directories until you see something that leaps out at you.
If you don’t have any personal albums, turn to google images and search for photos.
Choose a scene that makes you think something you’ve never thought before, or something that urges you to do something you’ve never done before.
Write down that idea before it escapes.
Make a list of all the things that could have led you to that thought, or culminated in the action that calls to you from that view. Write a scene which concludes with that thought, or results in the action you’re drawn to take.
Wednesday, March 9th, 2011 According to the sponsors of “Read an Ebook Week, the ebook is celebrating its 40th birthday.
In 1971 Michael Hart was handed a real boon – $100,000.00 worth of computer time with a Xerox Sigma V mainframe computer. He decided that the greatest value created by computers would not be computing, but would be the storage, retrieval, and searching of what was stored in our libraries. The first “e-book” was born—a copy of the Declaration of Independence.
Hard to believe that ebooks have been around for 40 years! It seems like they’ve only just come into vogue.
Although I believe they won’t take the place of a paper book anytime soon, I find that I like ebooks for a lot of reasons: I can carry a lot more books around on my device than I can tote manually, I can buy them anytime of day — in my jammies, no less, and I can search for text within the book (which is only one really kewl features of digitized text, there are hundreds more…).
If you haven’t tested the waters, it might be time to dip your toe in. You don’t have to have a dedicated ebook reader to read ebooks. Kindle, Nook and others have a free desktop software so you can read on your computer.
Don’t be worried about cost. Many ebooks can be purchased for less the the cost of a cup of coffee, and thousands more are available for free.
For starters, you might try Smashwords.com where many authors have made their books free, or put them on sale, for the duration of this week. (You can sort by cost, and the site includes a quick-click button to sort by free items.)
If you want totally free access to books, try Project Gutenberg at Gutenberg.org.
(I personally like Project Gutenberg’s Fantasy bookshelf. It includes the Oz books by Frank L. Baum, Lord Dunsany’s writings and Howard Pyle. The Science Fiction bookshelf includes many copies of Astounding magazine, and books by Poul Anderson, James Blish, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Edgar Rice Burroughs and more.)
If you know the book you’re interested in, you might try searching the publisher’s Web site. Publisher’s often have discounts that aren’t advertised on the large commercial bookseller sites.
If you have a favorite site for ebooks, please list it in the comments.
Tuesday, March 8th, 2011 I’ve recently transferred my Web site to a new service provider.
Hooray! You should see enhanced performance and experience no more timeouts!
Most glitches have been worked out, and for the most part, it should have been seamless.
Email is the last glitch to get past.
If you sent me anything after 10 pm last night and before 8:00 a.m. this morning, and received a bounce, please resend. It should get to me now.
Thanks!
Friday, March 4th, 2011 When you get hired at a newspaper, one of the first things you’re asked to do is write your own obituary.
This serves two purposes: while your co-workers are grieving, they’ve got a story in hand which should need little editing and can be run immediately. It also gives you something to do if there’s no immediate news to go chasing after.
Writing your own obituary also saves your family members the trouble…and you get to say the things you want to be remembered for, instead of what someone else thinks. (Mom’s proudest moment of you, might not jive with your own.)
Your obituary should be accurate, lively and memorable. It is, after all, the story of your life.
At a minimum, an obituary serves only as a death notice, containing the barest of facts: your full name and birth date, your age at death, where you lived and your place of death. It may or may not include how you died. It may or may not include information about a service.
A longer obituary (still, really, a death notice) will include service information. It may include the name of your spouse and children, your parents (noting if they predeceased you) and perhaps information about a memorial fund, scholarship or donation to a cause you support.
A true obituary will contain much more, and that’s what we’re striving for here. It will include all of the above information, as well as the details of your schooling; degrees, awards and other recognition; your marriage(s); military service; employment; and life note: stories, satisfactions, hobbies, interests, charity, fraternal/political/other affiliations, positions held, achievements, etc.
Here’s a good obituary template. Note the information included, but re-write it in a style that suits your life.
Tips for Writing Your Obituary:
- Make Sure the Document is Accurate – check your dates against official records, if possible. Make certain names (including those of schools attended and home towns) are spelled accurately.
- Celebrate the Life, Not the Death – even though an obituary is a death notice, focus on what you accomplished, rather than on how you died.
- An Obituary Can Be Humorous – Death is sad, but don’t let grief overshadow life, especially if you’re a funny person. Let us in on the joke.
- Show, Don’t Tell – (I’ll bet you weren’t expecting to see this on the list.) Were you a strong supporter of your community? Don’t tell us that. Show us by describing that you knitted hats for preemies for all the local hospitals, picked up trash on Main Street every summer weekend and still coached little league, even though your kids have moved away and have kids of their own.
- Avoid cliches and abbreviations.
- A Quick Note About Identity Theft – This is less of an issue for the deceased than it is the living, even though it’s possible to be scammed after death. If you’re writing your own obit (or that of someone else who is still alive) don’t publish it on the internet. Maiden names, birth dates, hometowns and team mascots are among the most often chosen for passwords. Be safe.
Here’s Your Prompt: Write your obit. If you’re uncomfortable seeing your own death notice, write the obit of a fictional character, but use your own life’s information. If you still can’t do it, write the obituary of a deceased relative or friend.
Thursday, March 3rd, 2011 Things are a bit crazy around here as I’ve bit the bullet and signed up for a writing class with mega-agent Don Maass on the 24th of this month.
Don is considered a top-tier agent, and he represents quite a few fantasy writers I love to read, so I’m pretty stoked about him teaching local enough (4-hour drive) to attend his seminar.
It’s a day-and-a-half workshop, to which I’m required to bring my completed manuscript. (No problem, as all my faithful readers will know that I’ve got one ready to send off to agents and have planned to do so this year.)
But I’m a bit angsty since three weeks doesn’t seem like enough time to get ready for the seminar, which is attached to the Write Stuff Conference hosted by the Greater Lehigh Valley Writers Group.
Luckily, I’m prepared. I have a routine I follow when I’m off to a conference. I’ve actually presented this material to writer’s groups, so if it sounds like I’m lecturing…it’s because I am. 🙂
Here’s what I recommend:
Before the Conference
- Think about your expectations. What do you want to get out of it? Knowing your expectations helps you plan what you’ll do while you’re there. Do you want to meet other local writers? Do you want to pitch your novel to an agent? Or do you want to learn about craft, careers and the industry? You don’t have to choose, you can do it all…but scheduling of panels may prohibit this. So, prioritize your goals and plan accordingly.
- Get an advanced copy of the conference schedule and look over your desired sessions.
Highlight and number where you want to be, the time and the room numbers, or copy this information to your planner. This will save you time at the conference, allowing you to network, join impromptu sessions and, maybe, get some writing in, too.
- Will you be able to pitch your book to agents and editors? Do you want to do so? If so, research the available candidates. Will there be someone present who represents the genre you write? Prepare a pitch according to that agent’s specifics.
- Hit the social networks to see if any of your online acquaintances will be going, too. Tweet, blog and post to boards and arrange a meet-up.
- If you’re going somewhere non-local: research the area: what restaurants are available? Are there any local landmarks or monuments you could visit? What about hiking, skiing, or other sportly adventures? (You could make this trip all about the conference, but hey, if you’re going somewhere new, you might as well learn a little about the area. Consider it research for your next book.)
- Check your writing “gear.” Make sure everything you need is in the bag you’ll take along: laptops and cables, a thumbdrive, your favorite notebooks and pencils, gum, mints, etc. (Check even if you’re meticulous about putting everything in it’s place–you never know.) If you’re attending any writing sessions, add a thesaurus and/or dictionary and your current work-in-progress. If you’re meeting up with fellow writers, you could also take a finished work you could use in an impromptu writing session.
- Formulate a list of questions you’d like answered. These could be related to the panels you want to attend, about presenters at the conference, about writing craft, about pitching your book, publishing in general (or specific), about, well…anything. Write them down and carry them with you so that you won’t forget to ask.
What Should You Bring?
- Your printed list of questions.
- Any research material you accumulated about the conference or the location.
- Business cards.
- Something to take notes with: your laptop, a notebook and pen, etc. (I always carry both: there will be times when a laptop will be inconvenient.)
- If you’re pitching, bring whatever the agent or editor prefers (and in the style they prefer it in): your query letter, a synopsis, the first five pages of your novel, etc. It’s doubtful you’ll need your entire novel printed out: no agent is going to want to lug an entire manuscript (times 100, or how many writers he meets) back to his office. If an agent is interested, he’ll give you his card and tell you to mail it.)
- Bring any giveaway table items that you can leave in designated areas: (book marks, flyers, brochures for writing-related services or your local writers group, etc).
- Any personal items you can’t live without for a few days or which will make your hotel room your home away from home: MP3 Player, cell phone, teddy bear, photo of your spouse, etc.)
Next time: What to do at the conference.
Saturday, February 26th, 2011  I had the opportunity to visit the Edgar Allan Poe House — now a museum of all things Poe — when I attended Balticon a few years ago.
It’s tiny, very cramped, with a winding staircase to the second floor, so narrow as to be almost claustrophobic. The staircase is nearly ladder-steep, and I found it more comfortable coming down backwards, after viewing the bedroom, than trying to navigate the usual way.
The museum contains very little: some photographs, a city directory turned to the page of Poe’s listing, Poe’s lapdesk (which the curator refers to as his laptop) and a few more odds and ends.
Not much, really. (Still enough to hold this Poe fan’s attention for a couple hours.)
But Poe is so ingrained in the history of Baltimore that it seems a travesty to me to cut funding.
Yet, that’s what Baltimore has decided to do.
Beginning in 2012, the Poe Museum is required to be “self-sustaining” or it will cease to exist.
You can help by signing this petition begging them not to cut funding.
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I posted a photo of Poe’s “laptop” and one of his grave on my Balticon post. See them here. I’ll dig up the photos and post a few additional ones in the next few days.
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