Today's 'WANAfriday' prompt for consideration is this: If you could have one magical item, what would it be and why? I frequently daydream about someone asking me this question. Someone, that is, with the power to grant me my heart's desire. Because I totally know the answer. In fact, I confess I set the prompt … Continue reading If I could have one magical item…? That’s EASY!
Ambling through my A-Z of fantasy series, we come now to the letter 'G'... which stands for several key fantasy elements -- especially GRASSLAND. Grassland - A large open area of country covered with grass, especially one used for grazing. meadow - pasture - grass - pasturage - mead - prairie Lots of fantasy novels … Continue reading A-Z of fantasy: G is for Grassland
I make it a habit each year to celebrate the summer and winter solstices if I can. No doubt it's the influence of all the fantasy I've read over the years -- a corner of my soul shows signs of being pagan. Here in Australia we've just celebrated the winter solstice -- the longest night. … Continue reading Winter Solstice ~ Songs around a bonfire
How does one decide on one's favourite place in all the world? I thought this week's Friday prompt would be an easy assignment. I had only to sift through my memories and select the location that made my heart sing the loudest, the one I most yearn to return to. Only it turns out it's … Continue reading What’s your favourite place?
Our most recent session of Dungeons and Dragons was fun . . . but in the end not much 'happened'. We spent the entire evening (about 6 hours) on reconnaissance -- as just about every route we attempted to take proved a no go. Now, I've had various questions through the life of this series … Continue reading D&D Chronicles: Explaining the basics
Once upon a time, when I was still living with my parents, a frequent Saturday morning activity was the completion of the weekend general knowledge crossword. Me and my dad would scrabble through an entire bookshelf full of reference books to figure out the answers and gleefully write them in. We would consult encyclopedic dictionaries, … Continue reading The sad demise of reference books
Says Chenna the devilcat: Ellen is letting me write the WANAFriday post today, because the estimable Liv Rancourt has acknowledged that "cats run the internet" and challenged humans to post about their favourite pets, real or imaginary. She might just be my new favourite person... Well, I can assure you I am very much real … Continue reading Diary of a Devilcat: Beware my Evil Eye
To resume my Travelling in the 90s series (in which I share extracts from my original travel journal with minimal editing to marvel at how different things were back then), we now head to the ancient Greek town of Delphi. (Here's the first post in the series -- Athens. And here's an introduction.) It's now … Continue reading Travelling in the 90s – Delphi
I've recently been watching a lot of old Time Team episodes (a British TV show hosted by Tony Robinson in which a bunch of archaeologists excavate exciting things over three days). I think they have the best job ever. I absolutely love the fact there's so much history buried under pretty much every innocuous field or footpath … Continue reading How Time Team can help with fantasy worldbuilding
Today's blogging theme is WORDLE, the wonderful word cloud tool. After some contemplation, I decided to build a word cloud from all my blog posts with the tag worldbuilding. Cool, huh? I rather think this word cloud reflects the themes of my blog quite well. It's made from the following eleven posts (a total of … Continue reading Wordle on Worldbuilding
Ellen Gregory 