Archive | October 2013

Worldbuilding SFWA Style: Reiassan

From this link, from the sfwa.org
I. The World

B. Not Earth at All

  • How does this world differ physically from earth? Is it the same size (same density, same gravity), same ratio of land/water, same atmosphere, etc.? Does it have more than one sun or moon? Rings? Are there spectacular constellations/comets, etc. visible at night or by day?
 
The world is slightly smaller than Earth (just a few miles in diameter),  and a similar density and gravity, and is generally earthlike. 
 
It has two moons, one large and one small.  It also has brilliantly stars in a sky full of light.  
 
  • Are there non-human inhabitants of this planet (elves, dwarves, aliens)? If so, how numerous? How openly present? What areas do they occupy?
 
Nope, there are only humans. 
 
  • How are the continents laid out? If there is more than one moon/sun, how does this affect winds, tides, and weather generally?
 
Reiassan and (Homeland) are both in the Northern/Eastern Hemispheres. Reiassan is to the west of (Homeland) continent by about ¼ of the world; there is another large land mass on the Western hemisphere, and several smaller land masses in the southern hemisphere.
 
Reiassan is a continent about the size of South America; Homeland is a mass equivalent to Eurasia in size, as is the Western continent. 
 
  • How much land is there, and how much of it is habitable?
 
There’s approximately  50,000,000 square miles (129,499,000 sq. km).  About 35% of this is habitable (neither mountain nor desert).
 
  • Is the axial tilt and orbit the same — i.e., does the world have the same seasons and same length of year as Earth?
 
Seasons are similar to Earth’s, although they count them differently in Reiassan; they consider the rainy season, the warm season, and the cold season.

II. Physical and Historical Features
A. General
  • In which geographical areas will the story take place? How much ground will the story cover? What are the most striking features of landscape, climate, animals, etc. in this area? How will these features affect travel time, communication, etc.?
 
Both extant stories take place on the continent of Reiassan, a sort of comma-shaped continent the size (approx.) of South America.
 
Reiassan is a continent wrinkled and gouged by glacial activity; it looks like a wrinkled napkin.  This makes travel difficult and sometimes prohibitive.
 
Agriculture tends towards crops which can be grown on slopes – more root crops and less grain crops, for one.  There are fewer trees and much of what exist are scrublike and twisted; buildings are mostly stone-created, with wood being rare and generally used for accent, not for construction. 
 
The tip of the continent, the part that was formerly Bitrani, is warmer and flatter, although it has a great deal of swampland.  Trees similar to the mangrove are prevalent here, and rice is one of their main crops. 
 
The seas on either side of the continent are very good for fishing. 
 
Into Lanamer crosses most of the continent, heading from near the Bitrani city of Onikanin, less than 1/3 of the tail up from the Southern tip of Reiassan, up to the Calenyena city of Lanamer, at the point where the dot of the comma reaches the tail. 
 
Edally Academy takes place primarily in Edally Academy at Ileltedez, a coastal city South of Lanamer. 
 
  • If there are non-human inhabitants, are there any areas they particularly claim as their own (e.g., dwarves traditionally live underground, usually in mountains)?
 
Still no non-humans. 
 

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/594255.html. You can comment here or there.

Apples!

It’s October (still); that means there have been things I’ve been doing other that writing.

I’ve been raking leaves and cutting deadwood out of trees.

I’ve been sneaking in that last bit of painting when the rain stops.

I’ve been picking things out of my garden, peeling, cutting, cooking.

I’ve been picking apples.

I’ve been picking apples.

I’ve been picking apples.

We had, when we moved in, one super-productive apple tree that had been overgrown, so made a lot of tiny tart apples.

Over the last two years (last year was a horrid apple season in this corner of the world; we got a warm bunch of days in March, followed by a cold snap and a day of 6″ of snow), T has been trimming the tree, getting into proper apple shape. At the end of this year, it really looks properly like an orchard tree.

But then, when he was cleaning out the hedgerow (he’s been cutting grapevines out of everything for two years now; they choke out anything they touch), he looked up.

And realized that those green round leaves… were apples.

We’d known we had one apple tree in the hedgerow.

(note: this is what Wikipedia thinks a hedgerow is. Around here, it’s a lot more haphazard. Think of ten feet wide, length of your property long of planted trees allowed to go wild, underbrush, thorns, and trouble. But it slows the wind right down!)

And that apple tree turned out to be two, hung with so many small apples that it looks like an interior designer’s idea of “apple fronds” or something.

But it turns out we have FOUR.

We gave a 55-gallon barrel of apples to a friend for cider. We’ve been giving away copy-paper boxes of apples to anyone we can get to take them.

And we’ve been cutting, coring, cooking down, saucing, and canning apples.

And canning apples.

and canning apples.

Send help?

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/594039.html. You can comment here or there.

Nano and Balance

As I step into my third Nanowrimo, I’ve been looking around and reading blog posts on “surviving nano,” “making it through/to 50K,” and so on, and I was struck that, if they mention your family at all, the general consensus is “your husband and children will not see you for the next thirty days.”

Combine this with advice to “remember to eat food, even if it’s Burger King and take-out pizza,” it occurred me that, not only is nano generally a younger person than mine’s game (oh, my, did I just say that? Hi, dad), but that it was sorely in need of a post on “balancing life, family, and nanowrimo.”

Then I wondered if I had done a sufficiently good job balancing those things in the past – my husband says no, but then he said I’d left him alone in the yard overnight and nobody had come to get him and he was so saaad, so I have to take it with a grain of salt (he’s also threatened to go feral).

So what I am going to do, gentle readers, is be mindful of balance over the next month of feverishly grinding out 2000 words a day in a setting I barely know. And I will report to you faithfully every Wednesday on my progress thereof. I might even get my husband to do a guest post (don’t hold your breath 😉

Stay tuned for the adventures of Balance and the Art of Nanoing.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/593681.html. You can comment here or there.

“I can Write 150 more words.” (Fluffy not-yet-porn)

It wasn’t so much that there were a lot of pillows in the room; the room was pillows. Caron stared at it for a moment. He’d never seen so many pillows. He’d never seen such a plush room, such a…

“It’s fluffy.”

“Well, yeah.” Areta peeked at him through long eyelashes. “I’m not sure what you’d have expected from me that wasn’t.”

“Something elegant, I suppose.” The words tripped off his tongue before he could stop them. “I mean….”

“I’m not going to object to you calling me elegant.” She offered him her hand, fingers tipped downward. Caron took the reprieve and stepped into her… nest.

And was immediately pulled on to the floor with a yank he hadn’t expected out of elegant, delicate Areta.

He fell hard, but the floor caught him easily, enveloping him like a hug. She was grinning when he came up, already moving to straddle him.

“See? That’s why it’s fluffy.”

He stroked her hip through her robe. “I see.” Or he might soon see, at least.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/593463.html. You can comment here or there.

Worldbuilding SFWA Style: Reiassan

<span style="font-size:13.5pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";mso-fareast-font-family:
"Times New Roman"”>From this link, from the sfwa.org

A.   <span style="font-size:13.5pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"”>Basics
<span style="font-size:13.5pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"”>

<span style="font-size:10.0pt;
mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Courier New";mso-fareast-font-family:
"Courier New"”>o    <span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"”>Are the laws of nature and physics actually different in this world, or are they the same as in real life? How does magic fit in? How do magical beasts fit in?

<span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"”>Nature, physics all work the same as in real life, although use of sira/aether can speed up/slow down/nudge these laws’ effects.

<span style="font-size:10.0pt;
mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Courier New";mso-fareast-font-family:
"Courier New"”>o    <span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"”>Is this generally an earth-like world? Is it an “alternate Earth”?

<span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"”>The world in which Reiassan is on is slightly smaller in diameter than Earth.   It is a Class M planet, with an Earthlike water-to-land ratio.  The flow of sira through the entire planet has led to some differences; i.e., the trench between Reiassan and the homeland continent has what could be called massive fire demons.

<span style="font-size:10.0pt;
mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Courier New";mso-fareast-font-family:
"Courier New"”>o    <span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"”>Are there different human races, whether or not there are non-humans like elves or dwarves? How does the cultural and ethnic diversity of this world compare to the real world?

<span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"”>In Edaly Academy and Into Lanamerwe are only on one continent. The people there emigrated from another single continent, which originally had three major ethnic groups (often referred to as West Coast People, Blondies, and proto!Calenyena); two of those groups made up the majority of the immigrants.

 Thus, the ethnic makeup on Reiassan is determined mostly by settlement patterns in the 1750 years since landfall on this continent.  The Calenyena are short, wide-hipped, and dark of hair, skin and eyes; the Bitrani are taller, more squarely built, and pale of hair, skin, and eye.  Many regions have mid-range mixes common, and the east coast has a small, genetically isolated population who have curly hair and copper eyes.

<span style="font-size:10.0pt;
mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Courier New";mso-fareast-font-family:
"Courier New"”>o    <span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"”>How long have there been people on this world? Did they evolve, or did they migrate from somewhere/when else?

<span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"”>Undetermined, but there are at least about 3500 years of human history between homeland continent and Reiassan.

<span style="font-size:10.0pt;
mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Courier New";mso-fareast-font-family:
"Courier New"”>o    <span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"”>How many people are there in this country? How does this compare with world population? What is considered a small town/large town/city in terms of number of people?

<span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"”>Good question!

<span style="font-size:10.0pt;
mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Courier New";mso-fareast-font-family:
"Courier New"”>o    <span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"”>Where does magic power come from: the gods, the “mana” of the world (as in Larry Niven’s “Warlock” stories), the personal willpower or life force of the magician, somewhere else? Is magic an exhaustible resource? If a magician must feed his spells with his own willpower, life-force, or sanity, what long-term effects will this have on the health and/or stability of the magician? Do different races/species have different sources for their magic, or does everybody use the same one?

<span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"”>Magic comes from the sira within the earth, which theory holds it, is formed when two things rub together.

<span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"”>Magic is controlled in Into Lanamer mostly with willpower and stamina, and in Edally Academy with mechanisms and devices.

<span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"”>There are no nonhuman races yet determined.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/593217.html. You can comment here or there.

Pre-story: Tairikie a year earlier

From [community profile] dailyprompt, 2013-10-25: “getting dressed for a special occasion”

This is in the setting of my upcoming nano project, in timeline, the cold-season before school begins.

“Tair-tair, hurry up.”

It wasn’t so much that Tairiekie’s father was rushing her as that he’d called three times in the last half an hour, and that he kept using her baby-name. She was at least a little past being called that.

“Almost ready, father.” She tugged the sleeves of her under-shift straight.

It was new; the whole outfit was new. The festival of Tienaabaa1 was about new creations. It was also many layers thick, because the festival of Teinaabaa took place on the shortest days of the year.

“Do you think that my project will win an award?” It was her last year competing in the children’s level. She had won an award every year before, but she’d only taken first place twice.

“I am sure you will do us proud. Are you dressed yet, Tair-tair?”

“Almost.” She had done the embroidery herself; she tugged her overvest to fit better over what was supposed to be a chest and wasn’t, quite, yet. The loose vest looked more like a child’s clothing than a grown woman’s, but all the decoration made it look loved and proper, at least.

Four layers of blue swished back at her in the silvered mirror in her parents’ room. Blue, for Tienaabaa. Blue for winter. Blue for the engineers, her mother, her father… and likely her as well.

She clattered down the stairs in her dyed-blue boots. “I’m ready.” Everyone at the festival would know she was loved and cherished. Everyone was going to know how brilliant her festival demonstration was, too.

Her father kissed the top of her head. “You will make your parents proud, Tairiekie.”

  1. . Tienaabaa (TEEN-ah-bah) is the deity of the wind and the water, the mind and creation. Formerly Tienebrah, (Tee-EN-eh-brah), the word was Calenyenized in the mid 1200’s.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/592959.html. You can comment here or there.

On this Date: Addergoole Drabbles of Kailani

October 29, 2004

“I’m not a big fan of Hallowe’en.” Kai frowned at Conrad, but he had is back to her and thus was unmoved.

“I’m not surprised, but that doesn’t mean the kids shouldn’t have their fun. They’re kids, Kaia.”

“They’re…” She couldn’t really argue. “Fine. Captain America and Wonder Woman it is.”

October 29, 2013
“Mom.” Audra dropped the costume on Kailani’s lap. “Mom.” She added a needle and thread and a pair of scissors. “Mom. Dean Storm!

“You can’t call her that.” Her twin Alistair hissed it at her.

“I can if she doesn’t answer to anything else. Mom!”

Kai blinked at her children. “Right.” The world had ended, but Hallowe’en, damn it, had to go on. “Hem, right?”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/592742.html. You can comment here or there.

On Nano, a rambling summary

I was reading – technically, having read to me, as Ri lives in my attic – Rion’s blog post on NaNoWriMo, which made me think about my own (far shorter) experiences with it.

I can remember hearing about Nano probably a decade ago, but my first strong memory of it is my friend Qlipoth’s “why I hate nano” blog post, which is only from 2009, so I could be wrong. Either way, it “wasn’t for me.”

I can’t remember why. I really, can’t. I just didn’t think it was my thing.

I do know that in 2010, when I played along without picking a project (Just aimed to get 50K words in a month), part of my excuse is “my other projects won’t wait that long.”

What I learned that year was that 50,000 words is a totally do-able goal.

2011 I did it for real. I took a short story I’d been playing with and used it as the jumping-off point for a novel. That was The Deep Inks.

I learned that I could, indeed, write a novel, but my idea of plotting was pretty haphazard and three chapters of architectural detail was probably not a great idea.

I won. I really don’t remember much about it, but I won. The stats say I won with 50,289 on the 27th. I was inches from the climax. Still haven’t finished that thing… <.<

2012: The states say I finished on the 29th with 50,511 words (I do not like this trend!) I’m not sure how much I learned, but I did it.

The one that really got me was this summer’s Camp Nano. My goal was 43,500, and I made it on the last day of the month. But what I learned…

…I learned, gentle readers, that I like outlining. I really like writing to an outline. I like plotting ahead of time. It makes a more coherent novel. It’s just more fun.

And now we come to 2013. I’m outlining a whole new sub-setting and a new type of story. I’m pre-prepping my novel out the wazoo.

What will I learn? We’ll have to see. But I hope to have fun along the way.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/592499.html. You can comment here or there.

The Cup, Part IX


After The Cup and The Cup, Part II, and The Cup Part III, and The Cup, Part IV, and The Cup, Part V, The Cup, Part VI, and
The Cup, Part VII, and The Cup, Part VII, in that Order

Cynara was… walking straight up a vertical road.

Pellinore stared at his former Keeper for a moment. This was impossible.

Part of his brain kicked the rest of it. He was looking at a woman who could bend minds and bodies, in a world where gods had destroyed almost everything. Impossible had really lost a great deal of meaning somewhere along the way, and all mere mortals could do was hold on for improbable.

“This is improbable.” JohnWayne had grabbed his hand, though, and he was being dragged onto the strange road along with the two of them.

“So’re you.” His son spared him an exasperated glance. “You complain a lot.”

“It’s my lot in life.” Stepping onto the road felt like getting off a carnival ride; his sinuses tried to fall out of his body for a moment, and then the new gravity of the road asserted itself.

It wasn’t a long walk, as such things went, and it was fine until you looked down. Pellinore caught Cya doing it first, twisting to look and then freezing, her face turning ashen, until she could force her feet to move again. Then JohnWayne. Pellinore held off as long as he could, but when he did, the world was a long, long way down.

“Can we survive that? If we fell?” JohnWayne’s voice was rather small.

“Yes.” Cya’s was clipped, and pitched to carry without her having to turn around again. Pellinore just nodded, though neither of them could see him. “But in that ‘that’s going to suck for a couple centuries’ sort of way. Less chit-chat now. We’re almost there.”

“There,” it appeared, was a cottage a mile above the ground, where the road bent back to “flat” to serve as a driveway.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/592328.html. You can comment here or there.

One Year Ago/The Unicorn’s Gift

After The Black Unicorns of Cardenborn, from about a year ago.

This is a bit darker than even normal Unicorn/Factory things.

However: while it contains mention of pregnancy, there is no rape.

Masha watched the child grow up.

She had grown up in Cardenborn, and she had known, early, what sort of woman their unicorns liked. Unlike her age-mates, she’d gone down to the river when it was her time, the way girls did in other towns, not because she was a virgin, but because she was no longer anything close to that.

She’d asked the right questions – and lots of wrong questions – of the working girls that came to Cardenborn and took their money to go down to the river. She’d asked different questions of the butcher, the baker, the candlestick dipper, her friends’ brothers and sometimes her friends’ fathers.

And when she had told the grannies that she would be going down to the river in her due time, they had not naysayed her. They had warned her, of course. “The unicorns are fickle, even ours. This could end in pain. It could end in death.”

Masha had wanted the mark, the small scar the unicorns left just under the ribs, that some places called the Unicorn’s kiss. The working girls who passed through had taken to wearing their skirts low and their shirts high, to show that off. Misha wanted to wear her shirt just under her breasts and her skirt down on her hips. She wanted the kiss.

She had not truly figured on the child, although she understood that one followed after the other. Her belly, unicorn-kissed, had swollen, and she had birthed the changeling child.

Watching him grow up was difficult, but it was only the start of her troubles.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/591994.html. You can comment here or there.