Amanda Meuwissen's Blog - Posts Tagged "fantasy"
Impact Readers with Real Locations in Fiction
There are as many locations in fiction as the mind can think up, because fiction never needs to be based in reality. If you’re writing about colonization on the moon, chances are it’s not going to be based off of any real place. Even when writing contemporary fiction, there are no rules that say you HAVE to write about a real city; you can make one up, and many authors do.
But there is something to be said about taking real places, places that the author knows well or researches thoroughly, that can have even more personal impact for readers.
My series, The Incubus Saga, has many real life locations mentioned, particularly one of the main settings, my home of Minneapolis, MN, and its surrounding suburbs.
When I describe the apartment complex in St. Louis Park where the brothers in the story first meet Sasha Kelly, that’s a real location I passed on the bus many times.
When I describe what’s around Loring Park, those are real details.
Schuester’s high-rise apartment by Lake Calhoun? You better believe I salivate over those awesome lofts, and that I even looked up the apartment layouts to give an accurate description of that building’s accommodations.
Obviously, there is some liberty taken with specifics, interior design, and the view a certain Irish Pub might have of the city it overlooks, but I always strive to capture a real location and give details someone who lives there might recognize. If someone happens to live in Chicago, Pittsburgh, or even Rushville, MO, it may not be as detailed as I can make my own hometown, but it will be as close as I can get it.
How do you use real locations in your fiction? Do you prefer to always make locations up instead? If you do use real places, feel free to share pictures or details of the town/city/location that inspired the setting of your story and why it was included.
But there is something to be said about taking real places, places that the author knows well or researches thoroughly, that can have even more personal impact for readers.
My series, The Incubus Saga, has many real life locations mentioned, particularly one of the main settings, my home of Minneapolis, MN, and its surrounding suburbs.
When I describe the apartment complex in St. Louis Park where the brothers in the story first meet Sasha Kelly, that’s a real location I passed on the bus many times.
When I describe what’s around Loring Park, those are real details.
Schuester’s high-rise apartment by Lake Calhoun? You better believe I salivate over those awesome lofts, and that I even looked up the apartment layouts to give an accurate description of that building’s accommodations.
Obviously, there is some liberty taken with specifics, interior design, and the view a certain Irish Pub might have of the city it overlooks, but I always strive to capture a real location and give details someone who lives there might recognize. If someone happens to live in Chicago, Pittsburgh, or even Rushville, MO, it may not be as detailed as I can make my own hometown, but it will be as close as I can get it.
How do you use real locations in your fiction? Do you prefer to always make locations up instead? If you do use real places, feel free to share pictures or details of the town/city/location that inspired the setting of your story and why it was included.
Paladin Pawn by Michael Young - New Release this Friday!
Fitting that today is my 70th blog post here, as I'm happily part of one of my fellow BWN author's blog tours with Silverbow Promotions.
Michael Young has been one of our dream authors; always on time, always with something new, and with a very fun variety of stories, from historical fantasy, religious supernatural, and even sci-fi end of the world.
Michael is a graduate of Brigham Young University and Western Governor’s University with degrees in German Teaching, Music, and Instructional Design. He puts his German to good use teaching online German courses for High School students. Though he grew up traveling the world with his military father, he now lives in Utah with his wife, Jen, and his two sons. Michael enjoys acting in community theater, playing and writing music and spending time with his family. He played for several years with the handbell choir Bells on Temple Square and is now a member of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
He is the author of the novels The Canticle Kingdom Series, The Last Archangel Series, and the Chess Quest Series. His also authors several web serials through BigWorldNetwork.com. He publishes anthologies for charity in his Advent Anthologies series. He has also had work featured in various online and print magazines such as Bards and Sages Quarterly, Mindflights, Meridian, The New Era, Allegory, and Ensign.
Follow Michael...
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Today's featured book for Michael is his upcoming middle grade fantasy release with Trifecta Books, Paladin Pawn, which comes out this week on Black Friday.
Book Synopsis:
When nerdy Rich Witz unwittingly becomes a Paladin, a white knight, in training, he is thrust into a world where flunking a test can change the course of history and a mysterious bully is playing for keeps with his life.
Rich’s grandmother leaves him with one thing before disappearing for good: a white chess pawn with his initials engraved on it. The pawn marks him as the next in an ancient line of white knights. He must prove himself in a life or death contest against his Nemesis, a dark knight in training, all while dealing with math homework and English projects. With the ghost of an ancestor for his guide, he has seven days to complete four tasks of valor before his Nemesis does, or join his guide in the realm of the dead.
As Rich rushes to complete the tasks, he realizes the chilling truth: his Nemesis is masquerading as someone at school and will stop at nothing to make him fail. As the tasks grow ever harder, the other knights reveal to him that his failure will break a centuries-old chain and bring the Paladin order to ruin. If he fails, the dark knights win the right to control the fate of the world, a world without hope or the possibility of a new dawn. So this is one exam Rich has to ace, with no curve and no extra credit.
And finally, here is a teaser to get you hooked on wanting to pick this up this weekend!
On the way to the door, something caught Rich’s eye, two boxes about the size of harmonicas sat on his dresser. One was wrapped in shiny silver paper and the other in black paper. His mother’s calls momentarily forgotten, Rich reached for the package and fumbled to find a place to tear the paper.
And it’s not even my birthday.
Working rapidly, he peeled back the paper and lifted the lid on the first box, ready for either surprise or disappointment.
What he felt next was a mixture of both. Inside the box in a black velvet casing, lay a hand-carved chess piece, a white pawn. He turned it over in his hands and found that the letters HWW had been etched into the surface.
“My initials,” he muttered, turning the piece over in his hands. He knew right away that he wasn’t going to put this piece where anyone could see it. They might ask him about his name.
As he had lifted the lid, a slip of paper had fluttered out. He replaced the pawn in its case and picked up the paper. Squinting in the low light, he made out the words written in his grandmother’s familiar script.
“For Heinrich—you will know when to use it.”
Rich laughed out loud. He already had a chessboard, and all of its pawns were working great. The last thing his social life needed was for him to join the chess club.
“With a monogrammed piece. That takes me from nerd to über-nerd.” He shook his head and replaced first the paper and then the lid. His curiosity piqued, he turned to the second box, picked it up, and shook it as he might a mysterious Christmas present. It did not make a sound. He thought his grandmother might have gotten him a black pawn to match, but the box didn’t feel heavy enough for anything like that.
He unwrapped the black paper, and the instant he slid off the lid, a fine black powder exploded from within and hung in the air. Rich jumped back, at first wondering if this was some kind of prank. It wouldn’t have been the first.
The sparkling black dust swirled in the air, forming into the form of another chess piece: a black pawn as long as his forearm. The lights in the room dimmed, giving it the feel of night though it was still the late afternoon.
Feeling his skin prickle, Rich stepped forward, thinking that if this were a prank, he’d have to ask how they pulled it off.
“You have been challenged,” came a deep voice from within the cloud of particles. “Do you accept?”
Rich glanced around the room, trying to see if someone had managed to hide in his room, or plant some kind of speaker. This was one committed prankster.
“Uh, who’s challenging me?” asked Rich. “Are we playing chess? ‘Cause I just got a lucky new piece.”
“Answer yes or no,” came the voice again.
Rich rolled his eyes, and played along. “Sure. Why not?”
“Answer yes or no,” insisted the voice.
He checked around his room to see if he could see the light of a camera somewhere filming him. Even if he couldn’t see it, he decided to give whoever was watching a good show. He bowed theatrically and said in a dramatic voice.
“Yes.”
The dust swirled back into the box and the lid snapped shut of its own accord. The lights returned to normal, and not a speck of the blackness remained in the air.
Michael Young has been one of our dream authors; always on time, always with something new, and with a very fun variety of stories, from historical fantasy, religious supernatural, and even sci-fi end of the world.
Michael is a graduate of Brigham Young University and Western Governor’s University with degrees in German Teaching, Music, and Instructional Design. He puts his German to good use teaching online German courses for High School students. Though he grew up traveling the world with his military father, he now lives in Utah with his wife, Jen, and his two sons. Michael enjoys acting in community theater, playing and writing music and spending time with his family. He played for several years with the handbell choir Bells on Temple Square and is now a member of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
He is the author of the novels The Canticle Kingdom Series, The Last Archangel Series, and the Chess Quest Series. His also authors several web serials through BigWorldNetwork.com. He publishes anthologies for charity in his Advent Anthologies series. He has also had work featured in various online and print magazines such as Bards and Sages Quarterly, Mindflights, Meridian, The New Era, Allegory, and Ensign.
Follow Michael...
Blog
Today's featured book for Michael is his upcoming middle grade fantasy release with Trifecta Books, Paladin Pawn, which comes out this week on Black Friday.
Book Synopsis:
When nerdy Rich Witz unwittingly becomes a Paladin, a white knight, in training, he is thrust into a world where flunking a test can change the course of history and a mysterious bully is playing for keeps with his life.
Rich’s grandmother leaves him with one thing before disappearing for good: a white chess pawn with his initials engraved on it. The pawn marks him as the next in an ancient line of white knights. He must prove himself in a life or death contest against his Nemesis, a dark knight in training, all while dealing with math homework and English projects. With the ghost of an ancestor for his guide, he has seven days to complete four tasks of valor before his Nemesis does, or join his guide in the realm of the dead.
As Rich rushes to complete the tasks, he realizes the chilling truth: his Nemesis is masquerading as someone at school and will stop at nothing to make him fail. As the tasks grow ever harder, the other knights reveal to him that his failure will break a centuries-old chain and bring the Paladin order to ruin. If he fails, the dark knights win the right to control the fate of the world, a world without hope or the possibility of a new dawn. So this is one exam Rich has to ace, with no curve and no extra credit.
And finally, here is a teaser to get you hooked on wanting to pick this up this weekend!
On the way to the door, something caught Rich’s eye, two boxes about the size of harmonicas sat on his dresser. One was wrapped in shiny silver paper and the other in black paper. His mother’s calls momentarily forgotten, Rich reached for the package and fumbled to find a place to tear the paper.
And it’s not even my birthday.
Working rapidly, he peeled back the paper and lifted the lid on the first box, ready for either surprise or disappointment.
What he felt next was a mixture of both. Inside the box in a black velvet casing, lay a hand-carved chess piece, a white pawn. He turned it over in his hands and found that the letters HWW had been etched into the surface.
“My initials,” he muttered, turning the piece over in his hands. He knew right away that he wasn’t going to put this piece where anyone could see it. They might ask him about his name.
As he had lifted the lid, a slip of paper had fluttered out. He replaced the pawn in its case and picked up the paper. Squinting in the low light, he made out the words written in his grandmother’s familiar script.
“For Heinrich—you will know when to use it.”
Rich laughed out loud. He already had a chessboard, and all of its pawns were working great. The last thing his social life needed was for him to join the chess club.
“With a monogrammed piece. That takes me from nerd to über-nerd.” He shook his head and replaced first the paper and then the lid. His curiosity piqued, he turned to the second box, picked it up, and shook it as he might a mysterious Christmas present. It did not make a sound. He thought his grandmother might have gotten him a black pawn to match, but the box didn’t feel heavy enough for anything like that.
He unwrapped the black paper, and the instant he slid off the lid, a fine black powder exploded from within and hung in the air. Rich jumped back, at first wondering if this was some kind of prank. It wouldn’t have been the first.
The sparkling black dust swirled in the air, forming into the form of another chess piece: a black pawn as long as his forearm. The lights in the room dimmed, giving it the feel of night though it was still the late afternoon.
Feeling his skin prickle, Rich stepped forward, thinking that if this were a prank, he’d have to ask how they pulled it off.
“You have been challenged,” came a deep voice from within the cloud of particles. “Do you accept?”
Rich glanced around the room, trying to see if someone had managed to hide in his room, or plant some kind of speaker. This was one committed prankster.
“Uh, who’s challenging me?” asked Rich. “Are we playing chess? ‘Cause I just got a lucky new piece.”
“Answer yes or no,” came the voice again.
Rich rolled his eyes, and played along. “Sure. Why not?”
“Answer yes or no,” insisted the voice.
He checked around his room to see if he could see the light of a camera somewhere filming him. Even if he couldn’t see it, he decided to give whoever was watching a good show. He bowed theatrically and said in a dramatic voice.
“Yes.”
The dust swirled back into the box and the lid snapped shut of its own accord. The lights returned to normal, and not a speck of the blackness remained in the air.
