More on TOMBS: It Began With a Map, 2nd Heidi Angell Guest Essay Posted

Hello Lovelies,

 

We have another awesome guest post from author James Dorr, as he shares with us the inspiration for TOMBS:  A CHRONICLE OF LATTER-DAY TIMES OF EARTH, which releases in May.  I have to be honest, it has been a true pleasure reading James’ insightful posts, and I am definitely excited to read TOMBS!  Without further ado, let’s turn the time over to James!

So begins today’s blog from Heidi Angell, with one small correction:  TOMBS is listed by Amazon for release on June 1, though that’s close to May (and if you would like to see for yourself, or perhaps pre-order, one can press here).  But given her next sentence, how can I resist quoting exactly the words she uses?  This, then, is the second guest essay on TOMBS:  A CHRONICLE OF LATTER-DAY TIMES OF EARTH on Heidi’s blog, the first on “What Is a Novel-In-Stories?” posted on February 9 (for which, below, see February 13).  While the first told about the structure of the novel itself, this one, titled “It Began With a Map,” is more on the [image error]structure of the world depicted within the novel and how it was developed.  To quote myself:  The original planning for TOMBS:  A CHRONICLE OF LATTER-DAY TIMES OF EARTH began with a map — different areas were defined in terms of the people who lived there.  More or less “normal” people lived in the New City and the Tombs; ghouls, the eaters of the dead, were in the Old City; boat gypsies lived on the river — they were mostly normal, but prone to disease from the river’s poisons, thus leading short but more intense lives; more or less normal people again lived in the Port City, far down the river, but had a higher proportion of mutants. . . .  And so I continued by wondering what various people did for their livings, social relations between males and females (some of which may seem a reflection on where we might be heading now), and end the post with a sort of portrait of a “typical” night in the Tombs itself, the necropolis just to west of New City across the great river.  Or, better, read it yourself by pressing here.

So, probably around the end of April/beginning of May I hope to have a third essay for Heidi, hopefully ramping up interest in the book itself when it’s out in June.  And I might mention also that this series really began with Heidi’s interviewing me at the start of the year (cf. January 10).  Those late to this blog can catch the interview by pressing here, or if interested in the novel’s structure, my first guest essay can be found here.