Monthly Archives: November 2012
That Time of Year…
…when you don’t really get anything productive done.
This year, I’ll be working part-time at Best Buy (Black Friday was absolutely crazy) and working full-time at UPS for the Christmas Season.
Unfortunately, my writing is going to suffer and I’ll probably be posting very little.
However, I did manage to finish Battle for Broken Plains and I’m getting ready to send it to a couple of Beta Readers. It clocked in at just over 27,000 words, about twice as long as I originally expected.
My plan is to put Battle up for free across all of the major distributors and advertise it as much as possible to garner readers.
I’m going to try to get more work done on The Hydra Offensive, which is currently sitting at a sliver under 44,000, with the goal of having it completed and published before June. While 2 books a year isn’t the pace I’d like to keep, the rigors of life are such that it’s going to have to suffice.
A Rant.
This is going to be short and admittedly bitter.
I frequent several (at least half a dozen) writer focused forums, reading up on news that affects the self-published author, trying to learn new marketing tips and generally improve my execution of my craft.
I’m not by any stretch of the imagination a successful author, yet. Combined, my titles don’t add up to 100 total sales. I give you that disclaimer because maybe I’m jealous or bitter.
On one of the larger forums that I frequent a self-published author who has gone absolutely viral is constantly posting threads which basically come down to “Woe is me, I’m so popular. Woe is me, I have so many problems. Woe is me, feel sorry for me.”
We should all be so unfortunate to have the problems that this author does, and I’m just getting tired of the humble-brag way that this author flaunts their success. I think I would be better able to tolerate if this individual just came out and said “Hey guys, I’m making boatloads of money, be jealous.” Yes, it would be arrogant, but at least it would be honest. It’s like the hot chick that’s always saying “OMG I’m SO ugly!”
There’s my rant. Hate away!
Creating a Culture
When I decided to add Orcs to the world of Zaria, I decided immediately that they would be different from the stereotypical “hulk smash!” Orcs that are so common throughout most of the Fantasy genre.
I had already developed the concept of a group of city-states that had once been a republic. I knew that these city-states, or at least some of them, would be places of high culture that were also home to mercenary legions.
So when it came time to develop my Orcs, I decided that they would be the core to these city-states. But that wasn’t enough.
I decided to add a couple of wrinkles to the Orcs and so I created the colonies of Thayer and Galten across the Vast Sea, nestled in the mountains near the nation of Ansgar. But now I had another problem: these colonies would have been separated from their homeland for so long that they would have culture all their own.
Right now, I’m working on Battle for Broken Plains, the story of how Raedan Clyve came to be the Baron of Broken Plains, and as I write, I find myself creating the culture for different parts of my world that haven’t been explored as fully elsewhere.
The challenge is to create a culture that clearly descended from the established culture of the City States, but at the same time has its own aspects. The Orcish colonies have lived near the brutish Nordahrians for so long, they have picked up on some of their traditions.
It’s one of the things that I like so much about Fantasy: the worldbuilding of a culture that mixes mercenary instincts with fierce clan loyalty and a culture of marauding.
Gunpowder Fantasy 