Cindy Tomamichel's Blog: World Building, page 3
April 22, 2021
World Building: Time for Tea
The cup that cheers, the kickstart of caffeine that wakes you up, the warm comfort of a hot drink at night. Who doesn’t like a beverage? It is no surprise then that drinks – and I’ll stick to non-alcoholic for today’s blog – are often mentioned in books, and then fans try to recreate them in so called real life.

Water is the most consumed fluid on Earth, but it does have problems. Water can be contaminated with bacteria, parasites, or pollutants, and this may not be obvious. In 2017 unsafe water accounted for 1.2 M deaths worldwide. (https://ourworldindata.org/water-access#the-global-distribution-of-deaths-from-unsafe-water) The recent urge to stay hydrated has led to a boom in plastic water bottles, leading to increased plastic pollution worldwide in oceans and waterways. Even tap water can become contaminated despite public health systems. So a simple drink of water is not so simple after all. For a lot of history, living in a city and getting clean water was a big problem. The Romans had a splendid aqueduct system but lead lined pipes. 1850’s London had public water pumps that were frequently contaminated with nearby cess pits and sewers leading to numerous cholera outbreaks. In a future apocalypse scenario, clean drinking water or the ability to decontaminate would be crucial.
So a solution? In the movie “African Queen” set in Africa, Bogart never drank water – even cleaning his teeth with whiskey, and avoided stomach trouble, and no doubt was a convivial companion. Beer drinkers also avoided cholera in epidemics, and weak ale was the drink of choice for many.
Tea is an infusion of plant material in boiling water. While tea (camellia sinensis) is most common, any flavoursome, non-toxic herb will do. In fiction, tea appears as the drink of choice for Capt. Picard of Star Trek’s Enterprise – “Earl grey, hot” to the numerous herbal teas of Ayla in “Clan of the Cave Bear”. The main aim is a nice cup of tea, but it can be used for medicinal purposes in a fantasy or historical fiction. Reading sources such as Culpeper’s Herbal are valuable.
But there are other aspects. Socially, tea can vary from a ladylike afternoon tea to a billy boiled over a campfire, or a brew on army manoeuvres. Economically, it opens trade routes while politically it can cause upsets like the Boston Tea Party. Are the characters poor and reuse tea leaves several times, then use the damp leaves on the floor to help collect dust when sweeping?
Coffee is a much cherished drink. From the first mad dancing goats of legend (from eating the coffee berries apparently) to Capt. Janeway of Star Trek’s Voyager risking her crew to gain resources to replicate coffee, it seems it will be here to stay. The amount of variations of coffee can say a lot about characters. A strong, black, Janeway coffee differs greatly to a half strength caramel latte with creamer. Or is it a cure? Terry Pratchett had coffee that was a cure for scumble, but too much made you see reality as it really was, stripping away human delusions.
Like tea, coffee has social, political and economic aspects. Will coffee survive climate change? Is it harvested using what amounts to slave labour? Or is it a cup of the expensive civet coffee that has passed through the digestion of a small mammal? Since this is now industrialised and puts the animals under extreme stress, this is not a coffee anyone should buy. (https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2013/sep/13/civet-coffee-cut-the-crap)
Milk based drinks are another alternative. Chocolate, yogurt drinks such as lassi, milkshakes etc are all drinks that can find their way into fiction. Chocolate with it’s exotic appeal and warm comfort. Milk with it’s connotations of childhood and nurturing. Again, we can contrast a warm cocoa before bed to sooth a heroines anxiety in Jane Austen, or explore the near worship of the chocolate bean in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. From a form of Aztec currency to a tin of Milo is quite a leap.
Soft drinks are carbonated water, sugar, colours and flavours. But what a world of culture they reveal. Coke or Pepsi? Time travel and drink Tab. Space travel and make some Tang. Add some lemon and be a wellness guru. Travel to Peru and drink yellow Inca Cola. Even the difference between cane sugar and corn syrup in Coke is noticeable. Certainly, a modern-day drink, but variations exist with raspberry vinegar (Nat the Naturalist, set in the 1800’s), adding citric acid for fizz and further back with healthful cordials.
Fruit or vegetable juice is another variation. It relies on a decent growing climate, which naturally will vary. So questing travellers might be offered different juices at the start of the trip to more exotic ones the further away they travel. The increase in variety just travelling to the tropics is amazing – so what would be the result of travelling to another planet? Colours, tastes and even textures would change.
So it is interesting to see how a common part of daily life can be used in fiction. A genteel sip with scones, or afternoon tea with a faun. A blast of caffeine to start the day or explore a nebula. Will the customs of today suit the future? And how did the discovery shape the society of the past?
Enjoy this blog? Have a think about signing up via my website or catch them as they fly around the ether on twitter or facebook . They will stay where they are pinned on pinterest .
My latest book, a contemporary romantic comedy is on Kindle Unlimited. Rocky Road to Love tells the tale of two scientists falling in love in the Australian outback. There’s geology, archaeology, dust, danger and the occasional possum! Link: Rocky Road to Love
For those that have not read Druid’s Portal yet, here is a link to the first chapter of DruidsPortal and to the second in the series Druid’s Portal: The Second Journey , and you can read a preview here .
Scifi more your thing? Try my short stories in the anthologies Quantum Soul and Tales from Alternate Earths 2. Or what about horror? Try Haunted, a free horror anthology.
Are you an author? My book “The Organized Author” is out now. Grab a copy here .
Doing NaNo this year or know someone that is? Grab a copy of my free guide “ NaNoWriMo Ready.”
If you are keen to chat with other scifi peeps, then check out the Knights of the Scifi Roundtable facebook group and subscribe to their newsletter https://mailchi.mp/29fb30bca8e4/update-subscription
Short stories and poetry? Try the Rhetoric Askew anthologies : Mixed genre , Adventure or Romance . Or my own collection Tales of Imagination and Tales of Romance.
Tired from all that thinking? Try a 5 Minute Vacation! 5 Minute Vacation Now available on Story Origin as a free review copy: https://tinyurl.com/5MVReview
And my own author newsletter, for book news, odd facts, recipes and random freebies. Every subscription gets a free copy of my short stories ‘New Beginnings’ two tales of later in life romance Sign up here. Or prefer a scifi story instead? Sign up here .
The post World Building: Time for Tea appeared first on Cindy Tomamichel.
March 22, 2021
World Building: Hitchhiker bugs
It’s a given that for most books, there is an element of travel. It might be as far as knowledge takes you, or it might be just across the road to the next tavern or nightclub. Either way, insects might be hitching a ride with humans or pets, as they have done since the first of us poked their large nose out of the cave and wondered what exactly was over that mountain range.

Insects adapt and evolve – like every other creature – to take advantage of their environment, with the goal of reproduction and survival. Some of these skills are toxic to humans, some benign, and others beneficial. Of course, insects play an important part of the ecosystem – one which many ignore in their efforts to eradicate them.
Some of these aspects relate to scale. For instance, we all have small mites that live and breed on our skin, eyebrows and eyelashes. Like mouth bacteria, these can be transferred by close contact – so characters kissing and the parent-child relationship transfers these readily. However, if you write scifi, it is worth looking at some of the electron microscope images of these, and you will have some brand new monsters to terrorise your readers! I’ve talked about this here.
A little bigger in size are insects like fleas, ticks, bedbugs and lice. These creatures have plagued humans forever- there are head lice combs found at Vindolanda in Roman Britain 2,000 years ago, lice infected soldiers with typhus in WW1 and was a leading cause of death. Fleas are obviously important as carriers of the Black Death, and their companions rats and mice. Even in a romance, a character might be dealing with their child with head lice (not a pleasant thing to deal with on all sides) or these things would be found in historical fiction. There is an amusing scene in a Gerald Durrell book, where his mother gets a flea in her corsets in a crowded movie theatre. Another in a James Herriot, where he enters a house with a flea infestation. In Ruth Park’s books ‘Harp in the South’ series, the slum dwellers fight an unending battle with bedbugs, which take on a symbolic aspect of dealing with the evils that affect slum dwellers such as crime and grinding poverty. The fact that we are still dealing with them gives you an idea of just how successful they are in surviving. I’ve discussed this in more detail here.
Moving up in scale, we have creatures like beetles, moths, bees, and spiders. Most people are or should be aware of their role in the ecosystem, in breaking down dead material (think of all the ghastly maggot descriptions in crime scene shows) (don’t google maggots). Or pollinating, providing food, eating pests etc. spiders can travel well on their own, via ballooning. While the image of a spider in her own little hot air balloon is charming (steampunk, anyone?) it is the spider, after hatching, spins a thread of web, and the wind takes them away to find a new home. While the mortality rate is high, spiderlings have been found 5km in the air, and hundreds of kilometres from their start point.
This size creature is often a hitchhiker with humans. They infest seeds, plants, bedding, ships and vehicles. Things like cockroaches, slaters, bedbugs, fleas, lice, etc are found worldwide, probably spreading out from trade routes initially. It is more than likely that they will end up travelling with us into the stars. Heinlein explored this in ‘Friday’ with predicting the next plague, and Andre Norton had cats as ships mousers, for more alien pests. Lack of water may send hygiene levels back to the middle ages, with all the possibilities for infestations.
In a story, this could affect a quest, when someone catches a new disease, a nasty bite, or the town they relied on for supplies is down with plague.
However, it’s not all one-way eating going on. The cockroach is universally disliked as a carrier of disease, yet they can be farmed for flour and some produce a kind of milk that is extremely nutritious. Crickets and mealworms also are commercially farmed, and a few minutes on the internet will show you people like deep fried tarantulas and make rissoles out of gnat swarms.
The scale can be the difference between nuisance or monster. A small spider is ok, but one bigger than you? That’s Aragog and Shelob territory. In the 60’s there was a flood of insect monster movies, mostly grown large due to humans messing around with genetics/radiation/space travel. Ants are quite popular for an alien with a tendency towards obedience, I use them as a model in my recent short story ‘When the Earth Needed Heroes’. Mathew Reilly had a preying mantid variant in his ‘Contest’, as a hunter. Even in ‘The Nun’s Story’ by Kathryn Hulme, there is a horrific scene involving ants.
Insects have also been the subject of myth. Arachne, doing a good job and being proud of her weaving, fell foul of the envious goddess Athena. In dying, she became immortalized as a spider. Insects have been a symbol of being reborn (caterpillars-butterflies), good luck (scarab beetles – although after seeing the Mummy, I am not sure about that), transformation – bees, industry – ants. In Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, Huck accidentally kills a spider, which he thinks is bad luck. The fear of bad luck dogs his thoughts for some time and is a great plot device in terms of foreshadowing. A deathwatch beetle, ticking down the moments of life for someone on their deathbed is a fine example of Victoriana. These sorts of superstitions are an interesting way to show both character and customs in different lands.
So while insects are perhaps a small part of our thoughts when writing, they can be a good way to show customs of a place, or a characters personality. Do they squash or save? Scream or observe? Or do they get out the frying pan?
Enjoy this blog? Have a think about signing up via my website or catch them as they fly around the ether on twitter or facebook . They will stay where they are pinned on pinterest .
My latest book, a contemporary romantic comedy is up for pre order! Rocky Road to Love tells the tale of two scientists falling in love in the Australian outback. There’s geology, archaeology, dust, danger and the occasional possum! Link: Rocky Road to Love
For those that have not read Druid’s Portal yet, here is a link to the first chapter of DruidsPortal and to the second in the series Druid’s Portal: The Second Journey , and you can read a preview here .
Scifi more your thing? Try my short stories in the anthologies Quantum Soul and Tales from Alternate Earths 2. Or what about horror? Try Haunted, a free horror anthology.
Are you an author? My book “The Organized Author” is out now. Grab a copy here .
Doing NaNo this year or know someone that is? Grab a copy of my free guide “ NaNoWriMo Ready.”
If you are keen to chat with other scifi peeps, then check out the Knights of the Scifi Roundtable facebook group and subscribe to their newsletter https://mailchi.mp/29fb30bca8e4/update-subscription
Short stories and poetry? Try the Rhetoric Askew anthologies: Mixed genre, Adventure or Romance . Or my own collection Tales of Imagination and Tales of Romance
Tired from all that thinking? Try a 5 Minute Vacation! 5 Minute Vacation Now available on Story Origin as a free review copy: https://tinyurl.com/5MVReview
And my own author newsletter, for book news, odd facts, recipes and random freebies. Every subscription gets a free copy of my short stories ‘New Beginnings’ two tales of later in life romance Sign up here. Or prefer a scifi story instead? Sign up here.
The post World Building: Hitchhiker bugs appeared first on Cindy Tomamichel.
February 22, 2021
World building: Salt
Salt may be one of the most important chemicals that humans use – and certainly it is the most loved. Humans have craved salt so much they start wars or accept it as payment for a days work. The craving for salt has shaped civilisations throughout time. How does this crystalline addictive substance fit into a novel? It is there in the word – crave. What people desire, they will do anything to get.

Salt is a simple element – Sodium Chloride. It forms a cubic crystal called halite. A fun experiment most kids would have done is to grow the crystals on string dipped in a saturated brine solution. The slower the evaporation, the larger the crystals. It is found obviously in the sea, in animals, and on land in salt mines, lakes and hot springs. While by itself it is colourless, it is usually found in combination with other minerals (magnesium etc) which give it different colours, such as greyish, or pink. It can also be in association with algae, which can give a salt lake a distinct pink tint.
It is harvested or mined in a number of ways. Salt processing was recorded as early as 6,000 BC and mining in 5,000BC. Processing is basically evaporation and can be as simple as harvesting from drying ponds, or intricate methods of boiling and refining. Mining is a difficult and dangerous task, with miners in ancient times having short life expectancies, although that is common for mining of all forms. Old or abandoned salt mines are used for purposes as diverse as churches, radioactive waste storage, health cures and tourist attractions. Post apocalypse novels could make good use of these as shelters. Some photos: https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2013/04/the-strange-beauty-of-salt-mines/100492/
Before refrigeration, salt preservation of meat and fish was extremely important. Added to the relative scarcity of salt and the labour needed to process it, and you have a highly sought and rare commodity. For humans, this leads to violence to obtain or steal it, slaves or prisoners to produce it, and the rich to flaunt it. This unfortunate aspect of humanity is something that can be included in any historical or fantasy novel. Less upsetting aspects can be a how to make a dish of salt fish, or bartering for supplies of salt, or using it as a form of currency.
For science fiction, the environment of salt is interesting. Super saturated brine pools are home to all sorts of interesting bacteria and algae, as well as more advanced creatures. One Star Trek episode involving changing the pH of underground water was found to be killing a sentient species that lived in it. Creatures that live in the chaos of evaporating salt ponds have evolved ways to manage salt concentrations, even using it as a spur for metamorphosis. Tardigrades have also featured on Star Trek, and there is room for other extremophiles to be explored in scifi.
Along with desire for salt is the reverence for salt. It is a common addition to spells in Wiccan, being a symbol of the earth. But many religions have customs around salt. Breaking bread and sharing salt, or salt spilled and throw it over your shoulder into the eye of the devil for instance. But salt was also used as punishment – sowing the fields with salt so your enemy could not use the land. Getting transformed into a pillar of salt because you lacked sufficient faith.
Romance may be able to upset the saltshaker! The salt sweat on the skin of a lover, a pinch of salt to perfect a dish for the beloved, or the ever-hilarious mistaking salt for sugar by the blushing bride. Or shedding salt tears, at either an unexpected proposal or a gut-wrenching tragedy.
So a simple daily use item has a history and power that can be exploited in a novel. Salt reflects the face of humanity in it’s crystalline surface. A glittering prize or a dark mirror of the worst of humanity. It’s your novel, so you can choose!
Enjoy this blog? Have a think about signing up via my website or catch them as they fly around the ether on twitter or facebook . They will stay where they are pinned on pinterest .
My latest book, a contemporary romantic comedy is up for pre order! Rocky Road to Love tells the tale of two scientists falling in love in the Australian outback. There’s geology, archaeology, dust, danger and the occasional possum! Link: Rocky Road to Love
For those that have not read Druid’s Portal yet, here is a link to the first chapter of DruidsPortal and to the second in the series Druid’s Portal: The Second Journey , and you can read a preview here .
Scifi more your thing? Try my short stories in the anthologies Quantum Soul and Tales from Alternate Earths 2. Or what about horror? Try Haunted, a free horror anthology.
Are you an author? My book “The Organized Author” is out now. Grab a copy here .
Doing NaNo this year or know someone that is? Grab a copy of my free guide “ NaNoWriMo Ready.”
If you are keen to chat with other scifi peeps, then check out the Knights of the Scifi Roundtable facebook group and subscribe to their newsletter https://mailchi.mp/29fb30bca8e4/update-subscription
Short stories and poetry? Try the Rhetoric Askew anthologies : Mixed genre , Adventure or Romance . Or my own collection Tales of Imagination .
Tired from all that thinking? Try a 5 Minute Vacation! 5 Minute Vacation Now available on Story Origin as a free review copy: https://tinyurl.com/5MVReview
The post World building: Salt appeared first on Cindy Tomamichel.
January 22, 2021
World Building: A Spoonful of Sugar
Sorry if you are now singing along with Mary Poppins! Sugar and sweet treats are such a part of our society – both a way to express love while also reviled as an addictive substance that harms the body. So it’s worthwhile to explore some of the history of sugar and it’s alternatives, and see how these can be used in novels.

Sugar cane was first grown and processed in India in the first century AD. While it was a basic form of crushing and juice extraction, it was enough to get a granulated ‘gravel sugar’ that would travel along trade routes. While Rome used it as a medicine, not a food additive, other countries such as China looked into getting their own. (All from the Wiki article on sugar)
It is a crop that grows fast – 7m in a season – and needs lots of water and sunshine. So it was limited to tropical areas, as it is to this day. As processing became more efficient, the demand for sugar grew. Unfortunately, it is a crop requiring hard and unpleasant labour to harvest, which led fairly directly to the slave trade growth in the West Indies, Caribbean and later on in Australia. During Napoleonic times, the trade from the tropics was restricted, and this led to a search for the sweet stuff in other crops – and so sugar beet crops flourished across Europe. Even today, 30% of sugar is from sugar beet.
Eventually people worked it all out, but like many desirable foods, sugar has a bloody history. Today the USA produces vast quantities of the mono crop corn to be used to produce corn syrup. A mono crop is bad for the environment as one disease can wipe it out, and then there are the problems of bulk production such as soil erosion and nutrient depletion, use of pesticides and herbicides, groundwater depletion and contamination etc. All suitable topics for apocalypse novels, and certainly if you add in climate change you don’ t need too much more. Michael Pollan speaks eloquently of the ubiquitous problems of corn use in all parts of the food cycle.
So what else is available to satisfy a sweet tooth? There is some evidence that desire for sweetness is linked to foods with more nutrients and energy – a lot of bitter foods have some level of toxin.
In a fantasy you could rely on honey, either from a village hive or brave the bee wrath in a discovered one. Or trade for sugar crystals from a hot land far distant to your towns of hobbits and dwarves. Or try a few flowers – Australian grevilleas have been soaked in water for a honey drink, although you need to be careful not to pick the ones containing arsenic (grevillea robusta, a common park tree incidentally). Liquorice root tea is another sweet taste that might appeal to your characters – and Jean Auel used this as a spirit booster in times of stress. Or ‘honeypot’ ants with nectar filled bums which are an indigenous food in Australia.
Historical fiction has lots of opportunities to explore sugar as a way to add details of the time. Pa Ingalls in the Little House books bringing back a tub of honeycomb and leaving enough for the bees to salvage and competing for the haul with a bear. There are numerous instances of sugar being needed and appreciated in Laura Ingall’s books – sugar cakes for Christmas, maple sugar for every day and refined guest sugar, and sugaring off parties with maple sugar in the snow. All these glimpses produce a detailed picture of the people and their world. In ‘The Endless Steppe’ by Esther Hautzig, an autobiography of her family living in Russia, her Father requests a spoonful of their precious sugar as an energy boost to his nerves after being interrogated.
Romance books often have a lot of eating in them – for isn’t the way to a man’s heart through his stomach? Leaving aside the weird misogyny of this phrase, certainly feeding others can be an expression of love. Novelists as diverse as Barbara Cartland and Barbara Cornwell have produced cookbooks, and I’d recommend Cartland’s for its many charming oddities over the murder quotes and food which are uneasy companions in Cornwall’s book.
But what of scifi? Given we are still humans with an insatiable sweet tooth, we need to find some way to survive it. Sugar and artificial sweeteners are not the best for our bodies in large quantities. On the other hand it would be easy to replicate. So most likely medical advances will need to continue to combat a sweet tooth, or I suppose in the long term, some sort of natural selection for excellent sugar metabolism without damage is possible.
Humans are fighting a losing battle to control sugar once tasted. It is also important to remember that the abundance of the sweet stuff today really only reflects the last two hundred years or so. How would this affect the tastes of those from the past? Or those of the future? A mars bar might not be so tasty on Mars!
Enjoy this blog? Have a think about signing up via my website or catch them as they fly around the ether on twitter or facebook . They will stay where they are pinned on pinterest .
For those that have not read Druid’s Portal yet, here is a link to the first chapter of DruidsPortal and to the second in the series Druid’s Portal: The Second Journey , and you can read a preview here .
Scifi more your thing? Try my short stories in the anthologies Quantum Soul and Tales from Alternate Earths 2. Or what about horror? Try Haunted, a free horror anthology.
Are you an author? My book “The Organized Author” is out now. Grab a copy here .
Doing NaNo this year or know someone that is? Grab a copy of my free guide “ NaNoWriMo Ready.”
If you are keen to chat with other scifi peeps, then check out the Knights of the Scifi Roundtable facebook group and subscribe to their newsletter https://mailchi.mp/29fb30bca8e4/update-subscription
Short stories and poetry? Try the Rhetoric Askew anthologies : Mixed genre , Adventure or Romance . Or my own collection Tales of Imagination .
Tired from all that thinking? Try a 5 Minute Vacation! 5 Minute Vacation Now available on Story Origin as a free review copy: https://tinyurl.com/5MVReview
And my own author newsletter, for book news, odd facts, recipes and random freebies. Sign up here. Every subscription gets a free copy of my short stories ‘New Beginnings’ two tales of later in life romance.
The post World Building: A Spoonful of Sugar appeared first on Cindy Tomamichel.
December 22, 2020
World Building: Protein
To round off the menu after fruits and vegetables, today let us look at protein. After Masterchef, it is known as the hero of the dish, and certainly many a diet revolves around the 50’s traditional meat and three veg. But how does this change in the future, the past, in a fantasy world or in a romance? Or the traditional ‘rat on a stick’ apocalypse menu?

Protein is an essential part of the human diet. It builds bones, muscles, probably brain cells and all sorts of things you need to get about. These days, for much of the developed world, we get more than enough protein to meet our needs. Most sources of protein are animal based, but there are healthy quantities in plants – lentils, beans, chickpeas, tofu, nuts and peas. The 70’s seemed to be a time when people worried about protein levels, possibly coinciding with vegetarian diets becoming more mainstream. Many of the cookbooks focus on often peculiar ways to food combine for the ultimate protein meal – rice and beans for example. This was also the time when fad foods such as nutritional yeast and blackstrap molasses became strangely interesting, and lentils were consumed in alarming quantities.
Amusing as 70’s cookbooks can be, a lack of protein is not funny. Low protein levels affect hair growth, cause bone growth deformities and have some bad effects on your innards and your muscles waste away. Quite a few explorers have discovered this, as well as people in poor situations and most likely throughout history. For large families – the norm before contraception – each child would deplete the mother’s energy stores. There are horrible stories of the decreased health levels of subsequent children, not to mention that the mother will often give her food (meat especially) to the husband and children first.
High protein diets are popular now, with the paleo phase and numerous others. These can also cause problems as your body then has to excrete the unneeded protein and your innards get stressed. While this is a fad today, in the past it was the disease of royalty and the rich.
So what sorts of protein are we talking about? For much of history it is most likely that animal protein formed a small portion of a diet rich in plants, legumes and grains. Even hunter gatherers relied heavily on the gather part. Plants are easier to hunt! But humans are bold omnivores, and if it tastes ok, it is most likely someone has eaten it.
So historically, hunted animals would have been a food source, depending on the environment. Mammoths and elk in an ice age, gazelle on the grasslands, kangaroos in the desert. But don’t forget the easy to catch small fry. Lizards, mice, birds, insects, guinea pigs and shellfish are all eaten somewhere. Just don’t have your characters eating rabbit before they were introduced. It is hard to remember that just because it is everywhere now, doesn’t mean that it was so in the past. Even chicken was a luxury food before breeding and farming made them a cheap meat. Oysters used to be so abundant they were food for the poor in London. Hate offal? Look at how many recipes there are in Mrs Beeton for tripe and things to do with kidneys (and pig ears, lungs, liver, sweetbread and head). Try working boiled pigs head into a romance!
In a fantasy, food can be hunted or traded. Think of markets where the meat is sold hanging in the open air. Are they cooking it soon? Scraping maggots off? Drying it? Pickling it in brine? Without refrigeration, meat storage is a lot harder. Who of the party knows how to gut things, or deal with all the purple wobbly innards? Are they keeping the fur or feathers for lighting a fire? Using the hide? Cleaning intestines for twine?
Science fiction can make the whole issue of where protein comes from go away. With a replicator, you can produce meat that never had a face. But you still need the raw materials. Recently there were photos of a 3D printed steak made of vegetable protein, so that’s’ one option. Another is in the supermarket, with a growing variety of vegetable based meat products that even bleed beetroot juice. Yet another option is vat grown meat. A few muscle cells from an animal, a growing nutrient solution and you have a lump of meat to make into things that resemble food, like chicken nuggets. While it probably doesn’t taste like it ran across grass, it is also likely that future consumers will not know the difference, or might even gag at the thought of eating an animal.
Post apocalypse, well anything goes. Depending on the characters, they could survive on a large store of dehydrated meals. Hunting, garden growing and looting all become valuable survival skills.
So a protein should be accessible in your world, palatable to your characters (and readers, so you can sell a spin off cookbook!) and have some realism to it. While Romans and Victorians might have sat down to roasted plover, it is unlikely to feature on a billionaire boyfriend’s menu.
Thanks for reading my blog during 2020. I’ll take this opportunity to wish everyone a safe holiday season, and hope that a vaccine is not far off now. Until then, mask up, wash up and keep your distance and we can get through and look forward to better times ahead. Cindy Tomamichel
Enjoy this blog? Have a think about signing up via my website or catch them as they fly around the ether on twitter or facebook . They will stay where they are pinned on pinterest .
For those that have not read Druid’s Portal yet, here is a link to the first chapter of DruidsPortal and to the second in the series Druid’s Portal: The Second Journey , and you can read a preview here .
Scifi more your thing? Try my short stories in the anthologies Quantum Soul and Tales from Alternate Earths 2. Or what about horror? Try Haunted, a free new horror anthology.
Are you an author? My book “The Organized Author” is out now. Grab a copy here .
Doing NaNo this year or know someone that is? Grab a copy of my free guide “ NaNoWriMo Ready.”
If you are keen to chat with other scifi peeps, then check out the Knights of the Scifi Roundtable facebook group and subscribe to their newsletter https://mailchi.mp/29fb30bca8e4/update-subscription
Short stories and poetry? Try the Rhetoric Askew anthologies : Mixed genre , Adventure or Romance . Or my own collection Tales of Imagination .
Tired from all that thinking? Try a 5 Minute Vacation! 5 Minute Vacation Now available on Story Origin as a free review copy: https://tinyurl.com/5MVReview
And my own author newsletter, for book news, odd facts, recipes and random freebies. Sign up here. Every subscription gets a free copy of my short stories ‘New Beginnings’ two tales of later in life romance.
The post World Building: Protein appeared first on Cindy Tomamichel.
November 13, 2020
World building: Vegetables
“Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.” The advice from Michael Pollan, author of ‘The Omnivores Dilemma’ would sound strange to many people not in an affluent first world country. Most people in history and in many places today don’t have a choice, with meat being a much smaller part of their diet. This dichotomy then affects fiction, particularly if you wish to write something a little more diverse than contemporary billionaire romances.

Vegetables have formed a major and reliable part of the human diet forever. The human digestive track and dental pattern has evolved to cope with both meat and a great deal of plant food. Gathering is the major source of food from day to day, rather than hunting for most areas of Earth. But in gathering plants, we changed them forever.
Vegetables can change with cultivation fairly quickly, given their shorter growing cycle. Gregor Mendel with his experiments on peas was able to map a gene sequence after a number of years. The urge to produce a palatable cabbage must have been more urgent than pea flowers. In Roman times, cabbages were quite small, lettuce bitter, and things like brussels sprouts and broccoli were new or non existent. Orange carrots are also quite recent (around 1500’s), having been purple and white in the past.
Gathering seed crops can also alter a plant. Corn, for instance, while eaten as a vegetable is a grain. The original corn ancestor dropped seed readily, which was useful for the plant, but not so much if you were collecting it. Over time, gathering the seed heads that stayed on the cob altered the appearance of corn significantly, which in turn helped more people flourish with greater food availability. Corn now relies on people for its germination and growth.
Historically, people also ate a wider variety of greens. In the Earth Children series, Auel mentions gathering the first of the Spring greens to remedy scurvy after a long winter. Many plants considered weeds today are nutritious – chickweed and dandelions for instance. Or they may fall out of use or fashion – sugar beets and mangelwurzels. So a fantasy or historical fiction writer could make use of these plants to add some interesting details. Culpeper is a good reference for this, as are groups that forage wild food, and heritage seed companies.
Growing vegetables may also change with circumstances. The original gatherers might have scattered seeds or planted in the hopes of a seasonal harvest when next they passed. The development of agriculture is said to be the basis of civilisation, providing the food needed for a dense population. But that brings its own problems. The Irish potato blight – a rust that destroyed potatoes then led to mass starvations and migration. Today we face the same problems with growing monocrops of genetically identical plants. Insects, rusts and blights are combatted with chemicals that poison the environment. What major changes would come out of this?
And so we get back to permaculture – growing plants in harmony and recycling. While not a large scale method, organic farming is at odds with genetically resistant crops which can produce the food amounts needed. But for a family or town after the apocalypse, permaculture might be the answer. ‘The Lucky Prepper’ by Emma Zeth is a book that uses this idea.
But what about the future? Hydroponics units in starships? Pollination and pest control by importing predator species? Alien plant species that can adapt to human food needs? Genetic engineering?
Our digestion, evolved through hundreds of thousands of years will still need vegetables, now and into the future. What form they take or have been will be quite different to what is in your shopping trolley today.
Enjoy this blog? Have a think about signing up via my website or catch them as they fly around the ether on twitter or facebook . They will stay where they are pinned on pinterest .
For those that have not read Druid’s Portal yet, here is a link to the first chapter of DruidsPortal and to the second in the series Druid’s Portal: The Second Journey , and you can read a preview here .
Scifi more your thing? Try my short stories in the anthologies Quantum Soul and Tales from Alternate Earths 2. Or what about horror? Try Haunted, a free new horror anthology.
Are you an author? My book “The Organized Author” is out now. Grab a copy here .
Doing NaNo this year or know someone that is? Grab a copy of my free guide “ NaNoWriMo Ready.”
If you are keen to chat with other scifi peeps, then check out the Knights of the Scifi Roundtable facebook group and subscribe to their newsletter https://mailchi.mp/29fb30bca8e4/update-subscription
Short stories and poetry? Try the Rhetoric Askew anthologies : Mixed genre , Adventure or Romance . Or my own collection Tales of Imagination .
Tired from all that thinking? Try a 5 Minute Vacation! 5 Minute Vacation Now available on Story Origin as a free review copy: https://tinyurl.com/5MVReviewAnd my own author newsletter, for book news, odd facts, recipes and random freebies. Sign up here. Every subscription gets a free copy of my short stories ‘New Beginnings’ two tales of later in life romance.
The post World building: Vegetables appeared first on Cindy Tomamichel.
October 22, 2020
World Building: Fruit
Food in fiction has been the favourite part for readers. Who can forget the dreams of feasting with Elves, second breakfasting with hobbits, or joining the Famous Five on a picnic with ginger beer, gloriously ripe plums and slabs of fruitcake? While these stories speak to an older generation raised in leaner times, we still have cookbooks that are associated with fictional worlds.

Books tend to show their age in terms of food. Elizabeth Bennett dining on hothouse grapes, Narnia and genteel tea and crumpets with Tumnus. Today a post apocalypse character may feel lucky to find a stale protein bar. But over time food itself has changed, and this includes fruit.
We are lucky today in most parts of the world that fresh, palatable fruit is fairly easy to obtain. But that fresh apple plucked from the tree, with all its juicy crunchiness is itself the product of many years work in selection and cultivation.
The apple originated in central Asia, and people have been cultivating it for thousands of years. Indeed, the word apple was a generic term for fruit of all kinds. As with many plants, the apple can be grafted to produce a clone tree, and the size controlled by a dwarf rootstock. So here you have a knowledgeable and skilled workforce, which is a cultural feature in itself. You can’t cultivate a great deal if wars raze the area continuously and people are focused on survival.
But the apple also has seeds, and this is where it proves it’s worth. The seeds do not all run true to type – they produce different types. So an apple picked in China can be transported to foreign lands, and grow something else – a soft dessert fruit, a hard cider apple or one that keeps well. In this way apple varieties are local to regions and may only be found in a small spot. The apple has spread across the world, changing as it travels.
So in terms of books, a time may not have had apples, or they may have looked very different. Many fruits are similar – watermelons were once yellow, plums were brough to the UK by the Romans for instance. So historical fiction writers need to do their research – and that can be quite difficult. The trap of thinking just because it is available today, it has always been the same is an easy one to fall into. Archaeological research can tell a lot from pollen samples, middens, floor debris, grave foods, written records and ancient toilets. A fruit may also be so expensive and rare that it is only seen by the rich – the pineapple was a decorative status symbol, and rented out for parties in Victorian times.
Fantasy novels get the chance to invent a new fruit, or research uses for obscure ones. Fruit that has gone out of fashion (sloes, medlars) or is a forgotten wild fruit (blackberries) can be interesting. Culpeper’s herbal mentions many medicinal uses for fruits. They may also be used differently – dried and eaten with meat and fat in pemmican as a travel food.
Science fiction gets the chance to pursue the evolution of fruits. Will a fruit have genes inserted for medicine production? Or can they travel across the stars with us, like they did along the Silk Road? Would colonists be doing the same grafting and seed saving that gardeners have been doing for thousands of years? Would a humble piece of fruit tempt an alien? In Midworld by Alan Dean Foster, consumption of the home tree fruit produces a chemical in the saliva. So when they spit into a guard flower, the defence thorns retract. The fabulous Plant thing in SE Sasaki’s series Amazing Grace is sentient and can produce fruit to aid a starving space station and gain their trust. There is a lot of research that looks at how plants react to their environment, so perhaps sentience is not quite the stretch it seems.
So fruit, like many things, just because it is common today doesn’t mean it was so in the past. Or maybe it was and has fallen out of fashion because it squishes being transported. Will a space traveler long for the crunch of an apple from their childhood, or will they be satisfied with strange new tastes?
Enjoy this blog? Have a think about signing up via my website or catch them as they fly around the ether on twitter or facebook . They will stay where they are pinned on pinterest .
For those that have not read Druid’s Portal yet, here is a link to the first chapter of DruidsPortal and to the second in the series Druid’s Portal: The Second Journey , and you can read a preview here .
Scifi more your thing? Try my short stories in the anthologies Quantum Soul and Tales from Alternate Earths 2. Or what about horror? Try Haunted, a free new horror anthology.
Are you an author? My book “The Organized Author” is out now. Grab a copy here .
Doing NaNo this year or know someone that is? Grab a copy of my free guide “ NaNoWriMo Ready.”
If you are keen to chat with other scifi peeps, then check out the Knights of the Scifi Roundtable facebook group and subscribe to their newsletter https://mailchi.mp/29fb30bca8e4/update-subscription
Short stories and poetry? Try the Rhetoric Askew anthologies : Mixed genre , Adventure or Romance . Or my own collection Tales of Imagination .
Tired from all that thinking? Try a 5 Minute Vacation! 5 Minute Vacation Now available on Story Origin as a free review copy: https://tinyurl.com/5MVReview
And my own author newsletter, for book news, odd facts, recipes and random freebies. Sign up here. Every subscription gets a free copy of my short stories ‘New Beginnings’ two tales of later in life romance.
The post World Building: Fruit appeared first on Cindy Tomamichel.
September 22, 2020
Word Building: A Sense of Place
There are parts of the world that are special. Often it is due to a past cultural event – something that gives the region a sense of identity. But other times it can be a place of fear, or a blessed spiritual place. All these ‘sense of place’ feelings can be worked into a novel to build an emotion about the people and the environment.

The bond between people and place can be powerful, lasting generations and becoming an intrinsic part of who they are. From the initial fighting to claim a new land, perhaps wresting it away from the original inhabitants, a new people settle in and it is theirs. Patriotism grows – and out of that – the need to defend that land. They fought, the very earth is soaked with their blood, the ground contains their beloved dead. But it is land bought at a cost – that of the original inhabitants. Their legends and loss too can become a part of the landscape, sitting uneasily next to the invaders. Since the dawn of agriculture, the bond with the land has become a dominating part of what it is to be human.
It can be done in scifi as well. Star Trek explored this in DS9, where the wormhole to the Gamma Quadrant was also the home of the Prophets, and holy to the Bajorans. The mix of spirituality and science made for some interesting viewing. In an episode of Voyager, they found a planet where a beacon forced them to relive a past massacre as people from that time. Janeway restored the beacon when leaving, to keep their history – their memories alive. Picard also lived an entire life in a village doomed to die, one of the most gut wrenching episodes of the Picard series.
But it’s not all fighting. Another part of the environment is the spiritual bond. A sacred mountain becomes a focus of pilgrimages. The mountain is always there, part of the background, and becomes part of the religion of the people. Was the mountain once home to a sacred relict? A few books have rediscovered Noah’s Arc or the Garden of Eden in remote sacred mountainsides, often guarded by a mysterious cult. Authors such as Andy McDermott have nailed the literary versions of Indiana Jones.
A mountain may also be the home of the Gods. Mt Olympus, home to the ungodly antics of Zeus and family. The remoteness and difficultly in access then lead spiritual hermits to live there, communing with deities and away from annoying human concerns. The hardships and primitive lifestyle enhances their aura of spirituality. Hermits didn’t just do mountains- if there was no handy mountain, a dank forest or a cave also worked. In a way, the very denial of comfort and the benefits of the world increase the perception of piety. David Morell used the remote spirituality of the monastery to contrast with the impending danger as the sinning ex soldier must once more fight for what he believes in.
Another sacred place can be a spring. A never dry source of water is magical enough, so it is easy to see why they would be the home of the Gods and need offerings. Many springs and wells in Britain have had offerings thrown in – broken good quality swords, jewellery, and even clay body parts as hurt people ask for healing. We still throw coins in fountains today.
But there is a darker side to a sense of place. For the sensitive or psychic, a place where death has happened can leave a lingering sense of coldness, fear, or horror. Kerry Greenwood in one of her Corinna Chapman mysteries talks of the feeling of foreboding that hangs around the convent. A place where young girls, often pregnant and destitute, faced pain, torment and death in a work house laundry. Ghosts are also said to cling to the place of their death, never leaving due to unresolved life issues.
So dark emotions can cling to a place, and this can be used to add a sense of horror and danger. An Agatha Christie character discovers a body, and ever after the smell of jasmine triggers a sense of fear and panic. Chris Cymri used an old church that had seen death by strangulation to give her characters a particularly harrowing journey to another world as they were enmeshed in past emotions. I’ve used it myself to add a sense of expectation of torture and death to an altar stone in Druid’s Portal.
But a place may not even be real. It’s impossible to read Narnia, Harry Potter or Tolkien without developing an image of it within your heart. In a way, the whole concept of Narnia is like a bewitchment, the characters (except Susan) never really lived in the real world again. Many readers probably feel the same – what’s your Hogwarts house or are you an inner hobbit, elf or wizard? I’ll bet you have thought about it. A fictional place can take on a life of it’s own and become as real as any other destination.
So, a place can provide tranquility and uplift the spirits, or offer a dark window into the past. It can foreshadow upcoming danger or reveal a past sin that needs to be forgiven or avenged. Beautiful and evocative writing about a special place can get readers through some dark times and provide hope that these times will end. All strong and deeply human emotions are the stuff of power and keep the reader turning pages.
Enjoy this blog? Have a think about signing up via my website or catch them as they fly around the ether on twitter or facebook . They will stay where they are pinned on pinterest .
For those that have not read Druid’s Portal yet, here is a link to the first chapter of DruidsPortal and to the second in the series Druid’s Portal: The Second Journey , and you can read a preview here .
Scifi more your thing? Try my short stories in the anthologies Quantum Soul and Tales from Alternate Earths 2. Or what about horror? Try Haunted, a free new horror anthology.
Are you an author? My book “The Organized Author” is out now. Grab a copy here .
Doing NaNo this year or know someone that is? Grab a copy of my free guide “NaNoWriMo Ready.”
If you are keen to chat with other scifi peeps, then check out the Knights of the Scifi Roundtable facebook group and subscribe to their newsletter https://mailchi.mp/29fb30bca8e4/update-subscription
Short stories and poetry? Try the Rhetoric Askew anthologies: Mixed genre, Adventure or Romance . Or my own collection Tales of Imagination.
Tired from all that thinking? Try a 5 Minute Vacation! 5 Minute Vacation Now available on Story Origin as a free review copy: https://tinyurl.com/5MVReview
And my own author newsletter, for book news, odd facts, recipes and random freebies. Sign up here. Every subscription gets an exclusive copy of my short stories ‘New Beginnings’ two tales of later in life romance.
The post Word Building: A Sense of Place appeared first on Cindy Tomamichel.
September 1, 2020
NaNoWriMo Ready
Grab it here: NaNoWriMo Ready
Write a novel in one month?
Crazy? Yes.
Doable? Also, yes.
We live in a world full of acronyms. Some sound mysterious and interesting and turn out to be accounting shorthand. Others – like NaNo – are simple and elegant. Yet hidden behind those four letters is a world of mystery, imagination, and creative frenzy. Once you know what Nano stands for, your life will never be the same again. Every November, the whisper will rise, NaNo – NaNo – is coming. Will you answer the call?
NaNoWriMo – National Novel Writing Month. 1,667 words every day is 50,000 words by day 30.
Should you do it? Can you do it? You won’t know until you try.
This booklet covers the practical aspects of writing life that will increase your chances of successfully finishing those 50,000 words by day 30. Learn about NaNo and see if it is for you. How to prepare tips – from housework to worldbuilding. Managing the words and stages through the month. NaNo for published authors.
So…
Are you a writer of novels, or do you just like to talk about the novel you could write?
NaNo will give you the answer.
Book trailer pretty to watch! https://youtu.be/BRY43H2x9hw
August 22, 2020
World Building: The Mundane
I was doing some mundane laundry – where I often get some great ideas – and it occurred to me that the doing of housework is a great way to reveal character. Not the singing and dancing while mopping Disney style – which is quite clearly the behaviour of a homicidal maniac. No? Well, ok then, moving on. But what does menial work reveal – and what does it have to do with Chekhov?
Chekhov (the writer, not from Star Trek, that’s another story!) famously said “If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don’t put it there.” Is it wrong that I think we could apply this to housework and other menial tasks?

Housework is such a dull activity, and you need to keep doing it over and over, with the knowledge that no one will notice until you stop doing it. But we all do things in different ways – even to hanging out laundry. Different cultures also have their own methods, and indeed acceptance of levels of hygiene. Use of cleaning chemicals, tools, water conservation – all of these can vary quite significantly across cultures and people. It is also likely to vary significantly as time goes on, or we go into space. (Do they vacuum in space?) It is also a subtle way to mix up gender norms by mixing up tasks and stereotyped behaviours.
A character is doing some cleaning up. Don’t leave it at that or leave it out altogether as the cleaning fairies do it between scenes. Do they think about the past? Their Mother? Are they fastidious, cleaning all around the nooks and crannies with a brush and using harsh germicidal chemicals? Why are they so strict about it?
Or are they more meh? Does yesterday’s washing up sit in the sink, and dirty clothes pile in the cupboard? Is this a temporary aberration from being tired, stressed, or unhappy, or is the cleaner late? Do they ignore all of this as not important while they focus on work?
What would happen if they are plunged into a more bohemian household, or a survival situation? Relax or breakdown? An example of this is Harry feeling at home in the bohemian chaos of the Weasley home. The family love is something he has missed in the sterile clean environment of the Dursleys. But can you imagine Petunia’s reaction if she visited the Weasley home?
Can the characters change enough to survive? Emergencies, an apocalypse, a sudden quest into the Badlands, or colonising a different planet all require a flexible mindset and luck. Sometime luck is of your own making – being able to cook, clean and start a fire are all good survival tools. So too is the ability to manipulate others to do it for you. Who will survive? It’s not always the one you think it should be.
In a post apocalypse novel, will they stay static in their mindset and face dying, or grow into the new problems and become a hero? In the novel “Flare” by Theresa Shaver, one character starts to grow into the new behaviours needed in an apocalypse but falls back into old habits of taking the easy way out – using her looks to hitch a ride. Everyone in – and reading – the novel knows that it will not end well.
What about the hero or the villain? Is the antique record collection organised alphabetically? Does the villain have all their books organised by colour and not by author? What little warning signs can you put in to foreshadow what they are really like? What is an everyday item they carry? What is in their bug out bag? Or what can’t they leave behind when they leave Earth? Heinlein used a beloved Scout uniform in “Farmer in the Sky”. Too sentimental to leave behind, the character nevertheless destroyed it when his friends were in danger. Character growth on a subtle level.
The well organised record collection hero may be an extremely pedantic scientist, and this can be a source of friction and conflict that can work well if the heroine is a bohemian artist. How flexible are they to change – and can this be seen in the housework? You can imagine the neat person’s reaction to the first signs of mess. Something drastic will have to happen for them to get together. Or does he pick up a cloth and help clean up dog sick without comment? (Hint: he’s a keeper!)
Villains can be more subtle. Outwardly charming, there is something off kilter. How do they react when a waiter spills coffee on them? A planet refuses to cooperate with their galactic policies? The explosion of anger, or coldness can be an early warning sign – not all is as it appears. Peter O’Donnell in his Modesty Blaise series had some fantastic villains with some truly vile ‘tells’ as to how bad they could become.
So while putting housework and mundane activities in writing seems dull, little snippets can enchant the reader. They’ve been there, done that – they understand. Beguile them – foreshadow and let them anticipate how it will play out.
Enjoy this blog? Have a think about signing up via my website or catch them as they fly around the ether on twitter or facebook . They will stay where they are pinned on pinterest .
For those that have not read Druid’s Portal yet, here is a link to the first chapter of DruidsPortal and to the second in the series Druid’s Portal: The Second Journey , and you can read a preview here .
Scifi more your thing? Try my short stories in the anthologies Quantum Soul and Tales from Alternate Earths 2. Or what about horror? Try Haunted, a free new horror anthology.
Are you an author? My book “The Organized Author” is out now. Grab a copy here .
If you are keen to chat with other scifi peeps, then check out the Knights of the Scifi Roundtable facebook group and subscribe to their newsletter https://mailchi.mp/29fb30bca8e4/update-subscription
Short stories and poetry? Try the Rhetoric Askew anthologies : Mixed genre , Adventure or Romance . Or my own collection Tales of Imagination .
Tired from all that thinking? Try a 5 Minute Vacation! 5 Minute Vacation Now available on Story Origin as a free review copy: https://tinyurl.com/5MVReview
And my own author newsletter, for book news, odd facts, recipes and random freebies. Sign up here. Every subscription gets a free copy of my short stories ‘New Beginnings’ two tales of later in life romance.
The post World Building: The Mundane appeared first on Cindy Tomamichel.
World Building
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