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How to Create a World
Fantasy authors get to do something that few other genres offer. We get to create our own world. There are probably as many ways of doing it as there are fantasy authors, but there are certain common questions that are worth considering before you launch into your epic task. Because there’s one thing you…
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Errish — A Vertical City
Generally speaking, I don’t do bizarre worlds. That doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate worlds that are carried through space by a turtle, or whose inhabitants are giant insects. Occasionally, I even create a bizarre setting for an individual short story. My main secondary world, though, is very much in the “exactly like ours except…
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This Thing Just Keeps Growing
I have an octalogy of novels to write, only one of which is actually finished. I have a list of “stories with beginnings” that stretches to five pages. It’s obvious I’m not going to take on another major project. Except that, of course, I did. That Was a Start It wasn’t planned. I do…
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What Do I Call the Place Where My Characters Live?
The characters you create have to live somewhere. Well, unless they’re chronically nomadic, that is, which includes many of my main characters, but even they are probably going to visit communal dwelling-places at some point. So what do you call these places? If you’re writing about a real place in the real world, it…
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Five Things “Everyone Knows” About the Pre-Modern World
Most fantasy secondary worlds tend to be inspired by pre-modern society in our own world. In theory, that shouldn’t be a problem. The trouble is that, whatever in-world details you put in, someone will object that it’s wrong — because everyone knows it wasn’t like that in the old days. Well, it’s a useful…
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Writing Goals for 2026 — Same as 2025, Really
About this time a year ago, I was setting my goals for 2025, and I was pretty sure what I was going to achieve in the following twelve months. After finally finishing the first draft of The Empire of Nandesh, the second novel of my octology, in the dying days of 2022, I’d spent…
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Decorating the White Room
Most scenes in a story consist of people having a conversation, in one way or another. Or fighting, of course, which is bizarrely similar. Even if there’s only one character in the scene, the chances are they’re thinking — and that’s communication of a kind. This is fine, but there a scene usually needs…
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The Shape of a Legend & Wyrmbane in Quest — 22 Stories of the Hero’s Journey
It’s exciting to have any story published, but I’m especially looking forward to the release, on 21st September, of Quest — 22 Stories of the Hero’s Journey. An anthology published by Fantasy-Writers.org, which I’ve been a member of since 2004, it features two of my stories among the twenty-two. A communal effort by the…
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Fantasy-Writers.org Anthology —Author Interview with David Staiger
As I highlighted in a recent post, the writers’ group I belong to, Fantasy-Writers.org, is about to publish an anthology of members’ stories. This is Quest: 22 Stories of the Hero’s Journey. To whet your appetite, this is an interview with David Staiger, one of the seventeen authors represented in the anthology, about his…
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The Middle Ages That Never Were
There seems to be a fixed idea that, at least until very recently, most fantasy has been set in a mediaeval-type setting. This is almost an article of faith to many people, in the face of all evidence, and shows that they have very little understanding of what mediaeval1 really means. Some fantasy authors…