Today I'm joined by my friend and fantasy author Deborah Kalin to celebrate the impending Easter launch of her collection, Cherry Crow Children from Twelfth Planet Press. I'm reliably informed they are four dark and disturbing stories, but they are also full of heart and emotion and beautiful imagery. I've spent hours writing in cafes … Continue reading Cherry Crow Children ~ A fantasy collection from Deborah Kalin
One of the things I've always loved about fantasy is the JOURNEY. Journey: an act of travelling from one place to another. This can be literal -- epic fantasy is full of tremendous and inspiring journeys from A to B. None is more iconic of course than the journey of Frodo and his companions in … Continue reading A-Z of fantasy: J is for Journey
I've been going through my holiday photos and found a couple that speak to this week's WordPress weekly photo challenge theme of COMMUNITY. These pictures are of the tiny and very picturesque fishing village of Clovelly on the northern coast of Devon. Fishing is a very community-oriented activity -- the villagers go out in the … Continue reading Fishing community
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
I recently attended the Australian National Science Fiction Convention -- Conflux 9 -- a fabulous four days of hanging out with other writers, industry professionals and speculative fiction fans. The convention offered many valuable panel discussions and workshops (among other things); I attended a worldbuilding session with Glenda Larke, an Australian epic fantasy author whose … Continue reading More on building fantastical worlds
One of the things that attracts me to fantasy as a genre is the ability to read about -- and, even better, create -- fantastical imaginary worlds that really sing themselves off the page. It's the chance to visit wondrous places that only exist in fiction, and I heartily wish I could go there for … Continue reading Culture, China travel photos and fantastical worlds
Last week my niece, who's nearly 10, showed up with coloured plastic beads threaded in her short dark hair. She'd strung the beads onto three strands of hair near her brow, and they clicked and jingled and looked really cute and funky. She offered to thread some into my hair and I will confess it … Continue reading With beads and braids in her hair
It seems I've finally gotten around to my promised post on "Why I Write" in response to Liv Rancourt's guest post in December. I should point out, though, that the focus is not so much on why I slave away for hours at the computer when I could be relaxing... it's rather on what's important about … Continue reading Four things I want my writing to accomplish
As a one-time engineer, I am particularly interested in how things work -- especially pre-industrial objects that I can weave into the cultures I create for the fantastical worlds I write about. I have, for instance, two Galilean thermometers standing on my bookshelf. These are elegant cylinders filled with a clear liquid in which float … Continue reading What’s tall, bright and measures temperature?
E V Gregory 