This post contains affiliate links. If you click it and buy something through the link, I get a kickback. I think there’s been a movement to gritty, realistic, highly-detailed secondary worlds. The whole conversation about worldbuilding frequently revolves, especially at a fan level, around how cool it is, and how much of it is there … Read more
What exactly are they rebelling against? This post contains affiliate links, which if you click and buy a product through, I get a kickback. The whole notion of punk inherently lies in rebellion. Punk rock was a rejection of the excesses of mainstream rock (according to Wikipedia), but after some time it simply became a … Read more
This post contains affiliate links, which if you click and purchase the project, give me a small kickback. It can be very tempting to establish all sorts of details about a world, creating a virtual encyclopedia, or a set of linked wikipedias, meandering about and naming heritages and establishing bloodlines and considering traditions in towns … Read more
Ever since I was young I’ve loved to read. But the books I feel the most comfortable with are mass-market paperbacks. In a form of escapism, I read exhaustively, reading the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes when I was 7, as well as an old English version of Le Morte de Artur (which, as I recall, … Read more
I think that in the genre of Fantasy, sub-genre Epic in particular, there has been something of a revolution in the last couple of decades, a growing focus on what is referred to as worldbuilding. Worldbuilding is not new. Ancient myths, and legends, and epic poems, built worlds. They defined boundaries and told human beings … Read more
Sometimes people self-publish a book on Amazon, and it seems like nothing happens. Nobody is really reading it, nobody is talking about it, nobody is reviewing it. Maybe you’ve done all the right steps, set up a website, promoting on social media, running a newsletter. Readers are not exactly subject to a paucity of choices. … Read more
Or at least just hide your phone in a drawer Since the end of World War II one of the things that have characterized consumer culture, especially in the Western Industrialized nations, is a nearly endless array of consumer devices, many of them “time-saving” devices. The vacuum cleaner and washing machine were clearly two such, … Read more
We’re at the start of the 2019 NaNoWriMo and it’s worth thinking about what winning NaNoWriMo really is. There’s the somewhat arbitrary goal of writing 50,000 words during a single month. This breaks down to a solid 1,666.667 words per day. That is actually rather a lot. It can get worse. Maybe you miss a … Read more
Went to a very nice Nano Planning event at Woods coffee hotel 116 sadly only the organizer and me were in attendance, but that created a very nice atmosphere to talk about our books and writing and more personal things. Woods coffee seems like a very nice alternative to Starbucks, and they made me an … Read more
[vc_row type=”in_container” full_screen_row_position=”middle” scene_position=”center” text_color=”dark” text_align=”left” overlay_strength=”0.3″ shape_divider_position=”bottom” bg_image_animation=”none”][vc_column column_padding=”no-extra-padding” column_padding_position=”all” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ column_link_target=”_self” column_shadow=”none” column_border_radius=”none” width=”2/3″ tablet_width_inherit=”default” tablet_text_alignment=”default” phone_text_alignment=”default” column_border_width=”none” column_border_style=”solid” bg_image_animation=”none”][vc_column_text]By Ursula K. Leguin The Left Hand of Darkness is Leguin’s prescient look at the difficulties of gender identity. The fourth book in the Hainish cycle, a series of books that share a … Read more