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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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Milliva, the doubting priestess
Days of Sagebrush and Absence is out now! (Get if from Amazon or from any of these other stores)It is the story of environmental collapse, of doubt and comfort, and of a well-earned mistrust of those who wish to exploit the land.My notes for this one b…
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Introducing Sakehin, a daredevil with delusions of grandeur
In this ongoing series of behind-the-scenes posts about the Moth Plateau novellas, we have Sake. He was a very fun character to write, one I deliberately made different from the types of characters I usually write about. In real life, he’d wear o…
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"Sailing through Flooded Cathedrals" is an editor’s featured poem!
Star*Line 49.2 just came out last week, and my poem, “Sailing through Flooded Cathedrals,” is one of the online-featured poems.This is a poem about finding meaning after some sort of incomprehensible disaster: “the vague hope for that unknown, / w…
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A singer–and the ones who pursue her
Continuing in this series of behind-the-scenes looks at the Moth Plateau, today we’re checking out the main character of novella 2, Pursuit and Moth Songs. And hey, we’ll toss in a bit about the other characters who show up here for the first tim…
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An icon and a cypher: Druskan
Each of the Moth Plateau novellas has a different point of view character. That does mean that to a certain extent you can jump in at any point in the series (though whatever order you choose for 1-3, I’d recommend reading those before 4).I’ll ad…
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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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The seeds of a story (or is it the story’s cocoon?)
With novella 2, Pursuit and Moth Songs, out now at Amazon and elsewhere, you may be wondering where in the world an idea like the Moth Plateau comes from. A place where the moths are so thick they block the light? Why would I even imagine such a thing?…