Cindy Tomamichel's Blog: World Building, page 4

World Building: Spirituality

The need for humans to believe in some being greater than themselves is very strong. For most of our past, religion has been a big factor in culture, laws, art and daily life. Sometimes for good, more often as a tool to control others.

How does spirituality enter into world building? Does the author ignore it as being potentially too controversial, too politically incorrect? Or do they use it as a hammer to bang home a message of morality the reader cannot ignore? Is it a message of peace, or one of oppression? Is it woven tightly into the culture with laws and ceremonies, or is it something remote from the daily life of the people? How does it balance with science? How is it reflected in buildings or the law?

It’s a delicate tightrope to balance a novel and a spiritual message. Not enough and the people and their world in the novel may feel shallow. Too much, and it can betray the author into sermonising more than entertaining.

As a genre, fantasy probably wins this balance. Authors can use some historical incidents or a culture and weave it into darkness or light depending on viewpoint. A struggle between the dark and light can involve magic of various sorts, and then the nature of the wielder balances the force. A Star Wars balance to the universe if you like, where good and evil are different sides of the same power. Or the use of magic could be a gender matched theme, with the pagan witches in touch with nature are at odds with the men in control wielding iron weapons. Expanding spirituality into the environment can make for powerful reading.

Sci-fi can deal with spirituality in a number of ways. A throwback to the past with the discovery of a lost colony. A few stories in Heinlein and Alan Dean Foster refer to colonised planets that cut themselves off from the universe, with themes of genetically engineered super humans, or ones with a strong and compulsory religious belief. A common factor is the extremists cut themselves off from outside influence. DS9 in Star Trek uses the spirituality of the Bajorans frequently as a plot device and a way to deepen understanding of the people. So for sci-fi, the contrast in the visitors vs the planet inhabitants is probably the most interesting way to display spirituality and culture.

Historical novels have a heavy burden. Not only do they need to get the history correct, they also have to accommodate current day readers. In one of the Laura Ingalls books, she spends time with a highly religious family, and Sundays were a day of no work, and only reading the bible was permitted. A time travelling modern woman bumps into a mass of morality codes and customs that could get her burnt as a witch or assaulted as a prostitute. One criticism of historical novels is making the characters speak or act like modern people – and yet trying to make characters reflect their age runs a risk of alienating modern readers with behaviours and prejudices long since forgotten. So spirituality is a dangerous thing in a novel. The author has to get into the heads of another species or culture, and drag the reader with them, even if the culture is an ugly one, or the belief itself is illogical. It’s possibly one area where it is hardest for an author to leave themselves behind. No one wants to end a novel that felt like a sermon. But if, for a few hours the reader becomes someone very different, then the author has succeeded in making them think long after the book is finished.

In some bookish news, I have just released a small volume of short stories, poems and flash fiction. Called “Tales of Imagination” it is a set of some of my published works in one place, including the prize wining Crone’s Fairytale, a variation on the Rapunzel story.

Tales of Imagination

Explore the strange byways of imagination in this collection. An eclectic mix of science fiction, award winning romance, comedy, the past – the future, and the just plain weird.

A gourmand on death row – what did he do? What happened to Rudolph Senior? Wishes and a not very Christmassy present. Leave your current life for a desert town where no one knows your name. A desperate future soldier asks for a terrible gift. A deadly virtual reality. Poems on age, words and the thoughts of a woman. A preppers personal apocalypse. An evolutionary change for the better. A boy dreams of a very different life. A choice between immortality and love. An award-winning fractured fairy tale of Rapunzel.

Escape the everyday with twenty-six short stories, flash fictions and poems.

Click here to go to your usual bookstore.

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 and get that author platform done!

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.

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Published on July 22, 2020 14:30

New release: The Organized Author

A special blog today, to announce my new release ‘The Organized Author’ is now available for purchase. Initial reviews have been kind, and one fellow author commented “you answered all my questions.” A 5 star review on Amazon: “This is a book which will shortcut those years of learning for you. It brings together all the useful advice you will find scattered across the four corners of the internet and presents it in a logical, easy-to-access, common-sense manner.”

I am pleased that it is of use to writers!

Get back some of your writing time by being a little more organized!

Tame your author platform and get back to writing!

Are you overwhelmed by the business of being an author?

Tearing your hair out trying to figure out your author platform?

Is your precious writing time disappearing into the time suck of social media?

Imagine having an organized platform with information ready for your next book launch. A magical place where readers can browse your books and contact you begging for more. You could be that author!
Whether you are a fledgling author just starting out or a seasoned professional, The Organized Author is here with the answers you need. Authors around the globe have used this system to build and streamline their platforms, – getting back to doing what they do best – writing.
Don’t waste precious time searching the internet for a how to guide for all the things. You’ve found it already. Grab this book, and let’s get cracking!

Buy link to bookstores: click here

As a final plug, I also offer personalised author assistance packages. These include setting up profiles, a newsletter and graphics. Other services include a platform assessment. Gift certificates are also available – so nudge your relatives and friends to get you one instead of yet another notebook! You can see my author services with costs here.

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Published on July 03, 2020 19:00

World Building: After the Apocalypse

This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

TS Elliot, The Hollow Men.

The phrase ‘post apocalypse’ is rather a portent of a doom passed, a fate that none but the few could avoid. The world is not what it was – change has taken the land. How can we create a new future by observing the present?

Post apocalypse fiction (or is it??) has several areas to examine in terms of world building. I shall assume we start from the present day or near future, as if not – that verges into alternate history. So there is the causative event – what is the type of apocalypse? This can have a huge influence on the future world. Where it happens – is one part of the world affected and not another or is it global? What are the results – cultural, environmental, economic and personal?

Although the event itself can be overwhelming, it won’t be a story unless we know how it affects characters. It is important that the apocalypse is a background element, not the main thing described. Even in the most dramatic of circumstances (watching 2012 was a full on visual assault!) there are still people that readers need to be passionately interested in. Without them, it’s a documentary, and a made up one at that.

The Event

We don’t have to look too far for inspiration for possible disastrous events. Various prophecies of the end of time have been popular since long before biblical times. The internet, conspiracy theories, the current pandemic and shows like ‘Preppers’ offer many possible scenarios. As does history. Humans have managed to survive an extraordinary number of disasters. Not ALL humans, necessarily, however.

A good place to start your paranoia is: the Wiki entry.

Global – this covers major events such as pandemics, solar flares, plate tectonic shifts, asteroid impacts, polar melting, magnetic core reversals, alien invasion, super volcanoes, economic collapse, the approach of Nibiru and the emergence of secret lizard people, irreversible climate change, human mutations and nuclear events. Out of control technology is also an idea, ranging from lab produced super bugs, AI robots (think Terminator) and nanotechnology. This gives rise to the horrific concept of ‘grey goo’ where out of control bio fed nanobots consume all life on earth to reproduce, leaving a grey goo behind, introducing the term ecophagy.

Local – this could be an event that affects one country, which may close itself – or be closed – from other countries. Variations of this sort of event could include political turmoil leading to cultural anarchy, environmental or agricultural collapse leading to catastrophic food shortages, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and a religious/political dictatorship.

Both of these offer different scenarios for characters. A global event leaves you with no escape and one has to adapt. Local events have a more immediate focus of escaping the closed in or affected area.

How does the event affect world building? For a global event there might be an initiating factor, then a cascade of happenings. As we have seen recently, a global pandemic has had first medical consequences, then social and economic. This has then had cascade effects on food distribution, political surveillance and controls, and increased policing of the population. The initial problem is still ongoing, but a series of related effects can make it even worse. This has also been different depending on geography, politics and culture.

There is also the time factor. Is your story set as it happens or far in the future? An immediate apocalypse is likely to have many more plot turns as the situation worsens. The emotions of panic, grief and terror are the ones that will be at the forefront. It’s a dangerous time, and no one knows who will or how to survive. What qualities will help, what personalities will shine? It has the benefit of thrusting known professions (accountant/ex marine/IT nerd/pregnant woman) into an emergency where a hobby may make the difference between survival and death, or a personality the difference between friends – or friendly fire. The research will need to explore geography, geology, food distribution and survival methods specific to the catastrophe.

If it is set far in the future, then world building becomes a series of steps. From the initiating factor, to the immediate aftereffects, and then the long term changes on the environment and people. Is it bad enough to build closed domes or escape underground or into space? Who gets left behind? Are people, plants and animals mutating? What sort of society has grown out of the ashes? Do they know their history or is it all a myth?

So world building research covers the physical environment – and here you will need to delve fairly deep. A blend of catastrophe and the existing material remains will provide a decent background. The changes in humans can cover areas such as political systems and power struggles, religion, money/barter, farming and then go to the personal – families, food, clothes, hygiene, sickness, mutations and personal morality. Again, different areas may react differently based on circumstances and culture. For instance, John Wyndham’s ‘Chrysalids’ is an excellent example of mutant children facing an extreme religious culture vs the utopia of acceptance in a long past apocalypse. His ‘Day of the Triffids’ is an example of an immediate global event, (the blinding meteorites) made worse by something no one could have anticipated. The coincidence of a leading triffid expert escaping the blindness made him a reluctant but useful hero.

So post apocalyptic fiction gives an exciting and enormously scary backdrop to play out the qualities that make us human. Not for nothing have disaster predictions been with us since we first told stories about a flood. They offer the chance to showcase the best and worst of the human condition, making the reader wonder how they would react. Would they be a hero or a scavenger? A wise leader or a religious zealot? Who will survive – and how does it change them?

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 .

Keen for some contemporary romance? I have my Australian outback romance coming out in a 20 author box set in December. Grab it on pre order now here for only 99c.

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 on preorder, and due for release July 1. 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

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.

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Published on June 22, 2020 18:20

World Building: Cultural diversity

Our world is a diverse place. So many different types of people – can this be covered in books? Or do you end up with pages and pages of description that doesn’t move the story along but bogs it down in the authors imagination? It’s a delicate balance between showing diversity in a world, a species, a town. While Verne in 1872 might have gotten away with pages (three pages, one after the other – I counted) describing molluscs in “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea” not so a present-day author. They will get blasted for telling, not showing. So what’s an author to do?

Diversity is a result of both evolution and social constructs. Both act in various ways to produce people that look and act very differently over quite short periods of time. In evolutionary terms, the colour of your skin might determine the climate your distant ancestors called home. Other features include acclimatisation to cold including skin colour, length of nasal passage to warm air to the lungs, and circulation in the extremities. Or altitude – two different human adaptations are increased lung function in the Himalayas and increased red blood cell capacity in the Andes. A mutation in a population – if a successful one – can rapidly produce a new type of human (or creature) better adapted to their environment.

For much of human history we did not travel around very much. I was enthralled to see a documentary on excavating a 10,000 year old body in the UK. When they analysed the DNA, and that of a local school, the teacher was a distant relative! For 10,000 years his family had lived, worked and died in the same region. The very soil and tress were a part of him. The point is, isolating a population also spreads and concentrates a mutation, so after a relatively short time, one batch of humans on one mountain look different to the valley dwellers.

Social and cultural habits have become a great force in changing how humans look and behave. Consider eating habits, dress, slavery, economic caste systems – all very different and can affect greatly how a population reacts or survives an issue. The current pandemic is a case in point. Trusting science, experience with past diseases and a cooperative and caring society have been instrumental in survival.

For historical fiction authors, even a cursory watch of “Horrible Histories” will provide details on diversity in the past. People revolting, having rebellions, hating others for their colour or envying them their land. However, some thought should go into viewing the past with present day eyes. For instance, the discovery of tagine style cooking implements on the Antonine Wall indicates a diversity of cultures in the Roman army which can be glossed over.

Fantasy writing is often home to a species diversity that is astonishing. Orcs, werewolves, elves, nagas, fae fairies, dryads – the human imagination regarding monsters is particularly fecund. Yet the tendency to stereotype is an easy out. Are all the dwarves beer guzzling miners? The elves all graceful and addicted to lengthy poems?

A stereotype is a quick and easy way to introduce a character, and one readily pictured by the reader. No need to describe a Tolkien elf – one readily pictures Legolas. For the most part, this can be adequate. Detailed descriptions can be hard to do in an interesting way, and if the story does not need nuances of behaviour to develop conflict, then a stereotype might be adequate. We don’t all have to reinvent the world in each book. But for a good one – you should.

In science fiction, this flat stereotype can be even more pronounced. An entire alien race can be a stereotype – think of Star Trek’s Ferengi as sleazy cheating profit hungry ugly creatures. Or all Vulcans (and Romulans) with the same hairstyle. First contact can be hard – doesn’t everyone look the same?

So a stereotype can be a useful tool to introduce a character. But you want conflict, nuance, motivations. I read that with the LOTR movies, they made computer simulated orcs, giving them a variety of behaviour patterns that helped them react in battle, so it looked realistic. They also noticed one group of orcs took off from the battle – and that was just a computer simulation. What behavioural changes will you see within a population?

Such examples abound. Romans becoming friends with slaves and seeing them as humans in “The Eagle” by Rosemary Sutcliff. In DS9 in Star Trek, the desire of Nog, a young Ferengi to enter Star Fleet exposed a swath of prejudice on both sides. So moving from a stereotype to the individual provides that depth of diversity that creates a great deal more interest in the story. No one can relate to a mass of faceless characters, but they can bond to an individual, even if they live in a galaxy far, far away, or a time long 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 .

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 .

Keen for some contemporary romance? I have my Australian outback romance coming out in a 20 author box set in December. Grab it on pre order now here for only 99c.

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 on preorder, and you can get a free gift “Ten Organizing Tips” by ordering 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

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.

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Published on May 22, 2020 14:30

World Building: A place to call home

In a quest, home can be the start of an adventure – and also
the end of one.

We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.
T. S. Eliot

But along the way, meeting people, seeing how they live- it
is all part of the wonder that is travel. But what is reading but travel? We travel
to strange new lands, meeting people of other races – other species – and find
something both alien and maybe something in common. For the world of a book is
to travel inside the head of another, a world that is no less rich because it doesn’t
have physical form. Reading a world makes it real. Who has not yearned for a
world different from their own?

The genres of fantasy, scifi and historical fiction can have
a field day with housing. There have been so many different ways of living in
different environments and conditions throughout time that there is no lack of
material to adapt. People, that adaptable, often pestilential species, have built
a home in every type of climate, using materials at hand to protect them from
the elements, the enemy and still manage to produce a building that people feel
well, at home in.

Scifi is a fine opportunity to imagine different planets, or
living in space, inter-generational spaceships, or a darker more degraded
future of crime and climate change. Dark concrete city warrens, or a future of
light and airy graceful towers. Bladerunner vs James Blish in his book ‘Welcome
to Mars,’ with his ethereal emerald underground city of the long dead martians.
Star Trek provides similar variations – colonists scavenging parts from their
abandoned spaceship to build a colony, or using the local sand and rock to
build adobe like villages. Star Wars and Dune building cultures in desert
environments, rich with peoples adapted to the endless winds, sand and
predators.

Historical fiction can mine the past and archaeological research
for details. From mammoth bone houses, to igloos, caves and every variety of
house. From the records, it is interesting what people thought made a place
feel like home. Cave paintings of hunts and spirits on the walls. Buried
ancestors under the floor in Catal Hyuk. A house no bigger than a modern loungeroom
housing a double-digit family. Communal toilets in Roman cities. Living with domestic
animals under the main house for warmth in Winter in snow bound farms in the
USA. A sheet of paperbark and a fireplace in Australian summers.

Fantasy is a genre that incorporates both the research of history
and the imagination of scifi. Here we find mighty quests into dark forests and
over snow covered mountains and into the depths of mines. But always there is
somewhere a people called home. Tarzan’s parents, shipwrecked in the African
jungle and beset by predators managed a treehouse filled with things that
created a home – where an older Tarzan would find material enough to learn he
was a M-A-N not an A-P-E.

Tolkien and Stephen Donaldson rank highly in creating worlds
of elves or forest dwellers, all at one with their environment. The tree houses
were not dead wood but living trees, as much a part of their lives and culture
as any person. The very appearance of an elf – lithe and slender matches the
grace of tree limbs and leaves. Contrast this to dwarves and other ground
dwellers being short and stocky with heavy weapons.

So a house must provide shelter, and be built out of what is
available. From the bones, wood, stone of nature, to more sophisticated bricks,
mortar, adobe, metal, plastic. A relict of past times, or an attempt to grow a
future? An ideal of living with nature, or a warning of future mistakes? But to
become a home, a house needs people who feel safe, decorate it with care, accumulate
pets, children, a history. From such a simple base, a reader can imagine a rich
world of details, smell the woodsmoke, or marvel at a food synthesiser.

And so it is a whole new reality peeps shyly out of the front door, and takes the first step into becoming real.

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 .

Keen for some contemporary romance? I have my Australian outback r omance coming out in a 20 author box set in December. Grab it on pre order now here for only 99c.

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.

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

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.

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Published on April 22, 2020 14:30

The Organized Author

For those readers that are writers or authors, then this
book will be of value. Being an author myself, I know just how long it can take
to figure out a new platform, or even determine if you need that particular bit
of social media. To give back to the writing community, I’ve put together a
booklet of social media – platform building tips and tricks and how to’s
designed just for authors.

Get back some of your writing time by being a little more organized!

Tame your author platform and get back to writing!

Are you overwhelmed by the business
of being an author?

Tearing your hair out trying to
figure out your author platform?

Is your precious writing time
disappearing into the timesuck of social media?

Imagine having an organized
platform with information ready for your next book launch. A magical place
where readers can browse your books and contact you begging for more. You could
be that author!

Whether you are a fledgling author just starting out or a seasoned
professional, The Organized Author is here with the answers you need. Authors around
the globe have used this 21-day system to build and streamline their platforms,
– getting back to doing what they do best – writing.

So don’t waste precious time searching
the internet for a how to guide for all the things. You’ve found it already.
Grab this book, and let’s get cracking!

It is on Preorder now, with a release date of June 2nd

Now- some special offers! While it is on Preorder, I am
giving out ‘Ten tips to Organize your Writing’ which you can grab here.

I also have an Organized Author newsletter! A tip to
organize your writing life every two weeks. Signup, and you receive a free planner designed
with writers in mind. You can sign up to that here, or if you pre ordered, you are
on the mailing list. Sign up
here.

As a final plug, I also offer personalised author assistance packages. These include setting up profiles, a newsletter and graphics. Other services include a platform assessment. Gift certificates are also available – so nudge your relatives and friends to get you one instead of yet another notebook! You can see my author services with costs here.

Personal note – these are troublesome times, but humans have made it through tough times in the past. Take care of yourselves and the more vulnerable members of your community. Check your friends are coping. Be kind to those that are fighting for everyone – health care workers, the food service industry, truck drivers, police, firefighters, teachers and chemist staff. Thank them when you can. Let’s try and come out of this crisis a better type of humanity.

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Published on March 22, 2020 13:30

World Building: Forests

Sometimes you can’t see the forest for the trees, but sometimes
you can’t see the trees in the forest. In novels, sometimes the forest is just
trees, a source of wood, a hiding place for bandits, but we never see more details
than the generic trees. What sort of forests do your characters live in? One
full of different trees, or cardboard cut outs?

It depends on the story. For instance in Pride and Prejudice,
the characters are first and foremost, so strolling through a “prettyish kind
of a little wilderness’’ is enough. The reader is focused on Lady Catherine and
how awful she is, not what sort of tree she is sneering at. But even so, this
formed a place of seclusion, privacy needed for both to show their true
colours. Would Elizabeth been so outspoken with her mother in the room? Lady
Catherine was impervious to her surroundings, speaking her mind equally in
parlour and shrubbery.

But as a setting, forests have a lot going for them. The mood of a forest can be powerful, with bright sunshine vs a storm. In Clan of the Cave Bear, Ayla is orphaned by an earthquake, hiding in forests, hunting for foods as a terrified little girl. How different is it when she is older, a mature woman with a knowledge of herbs? In ‘The Cave Children’ by A.Th. Sonnleitner, the forest danger is intensified by a storm, and becoming orphaned in the wilderness after fleeing the village. Disaster heaped upon danger and despair, hunger and discomfort. Nothing is comfortable, and the future looks grim.

Forests can hide a number of people – hermits, religious and helpful, or insane and dangerous, or isolated healers. In Morrinmoss, Thomas Covenant was saved by a forest healer, where she sacrificed herself for him. To get to her when he did not know he searched for her, he endured a period of madness enhanced by poison, hunger and injury. The hanging moist moss in the trees stained his white robes, a symbol of his descent into madness and death.

But the forests themselves can be the character. Dryads and
satyrs of myth, dancing their wild dances under the moon in green glades hidden
from the sight of men. Ents and the missing Ent wives, the force of domesticity
warring with the return to the wild. Anyone with magic of the earth and land
may be able to see and manipulate the forest.

There is a lot of research into the forest ecosystem, as even a bog standard forest varies. The forest contains multiple micro ecosystems dependent on climate, landscapes, slope, moisture, soil type and history. The mass of fungal mycelium network that links trees and soils and fungi, and the communications between plants via plant hormones and wind. All these things are real, so it is not too much of a stretch to think of a forest as sentient. Long years of hatred towards men with axes – think of Mirkwood in Middle Earth and the sentient forests of Stephen Donaldson. What reception would people have in there, and at what risk do they enter? What will they sacrifice to leave? What evil creatures have made a life within the trees?

In Rosemary Sutcliffe ‘The Frontier Wolf’ she uses the boggy forest and swamps as a powerful part of a land that is part of local celtic mythology. Passing through a sacred area is possible, yet there will be a price to pay with the death of one of their number. This was also used by Stephen Donaldson again in the forest of Garroting Deep (a giveaway of danger right there!) when the sentient and angry forest took a life to pay for safe passage. Nicholas Eames in Kings of the Wyld has extended this concept of an antagonistic forest to a huge area full of monsters, terrible creatures, dangerous trees/bogs/insects that can only be travelled well weaponed and skilled. Even then the memories of death stay with travellers. In Midworld, Alan Dean Foster had seven different levels of Hell forest, all different depending on sunlight. Each with their own dangers.

So fill your forests with variety. Don’t just have a cardboard forest, pack it with fungi, moss, bushes, grass – and see what is hiding in the shadows.

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 .

Keen for some contemporary romance? I have my Australian outback romance coming out in a 20 author box set in December. Grab it on pre order now here for only 99c.

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.

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

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.

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Published on February 22, 2020 12:30

World Building: Air

The air we
breathe is not something we think a lot about until something goes wrong. Gas,
dust, particulates, and the balance of gases all affect both our breathing – or
lack thereof! – and also play a big factor in visibility and personal safety.
The quality and composition of the air affects us on a personal – lung size –
scale, but also on a world wide scale as we feel the effects of climate change
and atmospheric pollution.

With the fires in Australia, and as of writing a volcanic eruption in the Philippines and industrial pollution, it is getting harder to ignore the air around us. You can see the effects in my photo – of the sun through smoke in the morning. Even rays of sunshine through the window feel wrong, shedding a ghastly orange apocalyptic hue rather than cheer. How do authors incorporate the air into a novel?

Gas

We have evolved
along with the planet to be most comfortable with the air composition to be 78.09% nitrogen, 20.95% oxygen, 0.93% argon,
0.04% carbon dioxide, and small amounts of other gases. That’s not to say we
can’t adapt– people that live in Nepal and the Andes have a larger lung capacity
and a slightly different blood system to cope with the altitude. The book “Surviving
the Extremes” by Kenneth Kamler is a fascinating read for those interested in
human survival in extreme conditions.

But scifi characters can explore the differences every time
they open the air lock. From vacuum, to fetid oxygen rich jungles, and then
play with the effects of trace elements and oxygen saturation on the away team.
How long can they survive – and what tech do they use to detect it and protect
themselves? Tricorders? Nanotech? Androids? Inoculations? Space suits?

In an underground situation the air can go bad very quickly.
Ventilation is the key – a good, continued flushing of fresh air. Wiki article
here. But people have know this for a long time – the practice of lighting
a small brand and sending it down a well was a safety precaution in Little
House on the Prairie – with almost fatal consequences when ignored. This has
evolved into the use of Drager tubes – glass tubes that colour change in
different atmospheres, as well as complex ventilation computer programs for
large mines.

Particular gases underground can have various dangerous
properties, toxic , asphyxiative or explosive. Most are colourless, and many
have no smell either. Methane in coal mines is explosive – and also found in
swamps where it can sometimes spontaneously igniting to give the ghostly dead
man candles of legend. Carbon monoxide is lethal at low concentrations. Sulphur
dioxide with its rotten egg smell. But its not only the immediate toxic
effects, some can affect your lungs and health later on. Chlorine gas in WW1
was notorious for destroying lung capacity, even if you survived initially.

Dust and particulates

Dust and sand storms are shorter term events that present as
an emergency. Protection of the skin, face etc is vital and often appears on
movies set in the desert such as ‘The Scorpion King’. I have a dust storm in my
upcoming novel ‘Rocky Road to Love’ where the heroine has to rescue the hero,
using her past experience and practical skills in the desert.

But particulates – fine dust, ash, tobacco smoke, biological
ones such as viruses and allergens such as pollen – these have some interesting
effects on people and the environment. For more in depth info on particulates
please check out the Wikipedia
article.

Visually, pollution can colour the air – grey- brown-
orange- unnatural hues that give an unsettling feeling. Urban fantasy and near
future apocalyptic books often mention the air, with tech developed to filter
it, or the high price of bottled clean air. The appearance of a plume of smoke
in the distance can be an omen of worse to come – volcano- forest fire – death is
coming. Auel used this several times very effectively, with Ayla using a forest
fire to hunt, and becoming upset by the carnage, and also a volcanic eruption of
ash which fell, providing a scene of monochrome. Grey ash settling and
obliterating people’s differences was a powerful image at the funeral of Rydag,
a boy of mixed species.

With a close fire front, burnt leaves flutter down, and
later embers start new fire fronts. The dust and gases from a volcano can kill
long before there is any lava. Pompeii and Mt St Helens are examples of this. The
distance for observation seems fine – until it isn’t.

Lots of interesting things fall from the sky. There is a world of myth in rains of frogs, blood, fish and manna. Most of the rains of creatures can be explained (storm fronts, bacteria, acts of divine revulsion etc). Strange things falling from the sky take on the aspect of myth and become omens, portents of future disaster. Fear of the unknown or the invisible is fairly well hard wired into the human condition. Humans love seeing patterns where none exist. Or do they? An ancient story or myth can be the only way history is remembered.

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.

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

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

I also have a newsletter for Multi Genre Readers, with a
bunch of other talented authors contributing articles. Sign up here .

And my own author newsletter, for book news, odd facts,
recipes and random freebies. Sign
up here.

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Published on January 22, 2020 12:30