Tough Traveling with Fantasy Review Barn — Ancient Engineering Projects

Posted on April 16, 2014 by H. Anthe Davis

I just noticed (like, five minutes ago) that my favorite review blog has started doing a take on Dianne Wynne Jones’ classic Tough Guide to Fantasyland.  I got a copy of the book quite a while ago, and it easily stands alongside the Evil Overlord’s List and TVTropes as a great genre-deconstructing tool.  Plus: humor.

Anyway, Fantasy Review Barn’s Nathan is doing a weekly feature now on a TGtF entry and the books it brings to mind.  Because I agree with his reasons, I thought I’d take the opportunity to hop on that wagon and talk about incidences of those entries/tropes in my own writing!  Yay!

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Creating a Fictional Planet’s Calendar

Posted on April 11, 2014 by H. Anthe Davis

I just wanted to reblog this to help anyone who’s as nuts about creating their own planet and solar system as I am. Spent way too long dinking with the calculations today, but that’s just because I haven’t solved an equation since college.

Jay Dee's avatarI Read Encyclopedias for Fun

When humans finally manage to colonise another planet, there will be some significant differences between life on that planet and life on Earth.  One of them is the calendar.  Why would the Earth’s calendar be inadequate?

First, the orbital period of the new planet will be different than Earth’s 365.25 days.  Second, the length of the day is going to be different.  Third, with these two basic pieces of information, the year will start at different seasons, and midnight would happen at different times of day.  It would make no sense.

So, what we need to do is create a new calendar and timekeeping system.  I’m going to use my fictional world of Ariadne as an example.  I have yet to figure out the calendar, so I’m doing it on the fly as I write this post.

First of all, we need to determine the distance of the planet from…

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The Psycher Gene

Posted on April 10, 2014 by H. Anthe Davis

My last post was all about the pseudoscience of shapeshifting in the world of the War of Memory series.  I remembered shortly afterward, though, that another important talent is closely linked with the skinchanging gene — or rather, with having a deactive one.  That talent is mentalism.

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Posted in Magic, World Info | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Halion Shapeshifting and the Skinchanger Gene

Posted on April 3, 2014 by H. Anthe Davis

There isn’t much science in book 1 — at least, not visibly.  As a former student of the hard sciences and a current interested dabbler, however, I can’t help but create scientific underpinnings for many of my magical and spiritual happenings.  Some people don’t like that, or at least so I’ve been told; they want fantasy to be completely its own imaginary beast, without the need for anchors of investigation or testing.  Since I’m trying to build a large world, though — and more than that, a world that changes and progresses through the ages — I can’t bend to that kind of philosophy.  Beside that, I don’t want to.

I want to know how you get from wolf to man.

 

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Search Terms

Posted on March 27, 2014 by H. Anthe Davis

I’m not the best tagger on the net.  My categories no doubt leave much to be desired, and my aesthetic urge toward a small tag cloud probably means I don’t nearly get the reach I should.  Therefore, I like it that WordPress shows me the search terms that people have used in order to find my blog (though more often than not, those search terms show up as ‘unknown’).

What I’ve discovered is that sometimes, I still can’t figure out how people got here.  Or what they even want!

So here are a few of the terms that have brought people to my project — and the related posts.  It’s a post retrospective!

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Posted in Fluff | 4 Comments

Culture Composites: Riddian

Posted on March 21, 2014 by H. Anthe Davis

Picking up on our slow loop through the Imperial Heartlands, in this installment we visit the Kingdom of Riddian.  It has been allowed to stay a kingdom because it submitted to the Emperor in the early years of the Imperial expansion, rather than resisting like the protectorates of Amandon and Darronwy, and has thus been given the right to self-govern (mostly) and to select its own leaders rather than having them appointed.

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Posted in World Info, Worldbuilding | Tagged , , , | 5 Comments

Culture Composites: Corvia

Posted on March 9, 2014 by H. Anthe Davis

I realized that while I was moving eastward through my cultures, I entirely skipped the Corvish (or Korvii) — which is weird, because they’re some of my favorites.  This may have to do with the fact that I am, myself, a redhead and thus have an attachment to a culture of redheads (and others) who really just want to kick ass.

Below is someone else’s image of a character that I saw and thought ‘Corvish!’  The image is linked to his site, which is unfortunately under reconstruction last I checked.  Sadface.

Anyway.

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Posted in History, World Info, Worldbuilding | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

Micro-Fiction: Mayfly

Posted on March 4, 2014 by H. Anthe Davis

It was four o’clock and, as usual, George was dead.  As he stared at the water-stained ceiling through unfocused eyes, moved only by the stutter of his heart winding down, he reflected on the tedium of this.  Another day, another corpse — and summer nearly here, leaving too much light lingering beyond his cheap hotel room door.

Too much time he’d have to lay here, as the last neurons asphyxiated and the muscles grew stiff, until the soft touch of darkness freed him to seek a new host.

We could at least have died by the TV, he thought, then sighed internally and with the last spasm left in this stewardess body, closed his eyes.  It would take ages to get to Alaska like this, but at least he could still dream.

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That Cursed Sex Scene

Posted on February 23, 2014 by H. Anthe Davis

I recently received a review of book 2 by the fantastic Pauline M. Ross of Fantasy Review Barn.  Much cheering and excitement was had, but she also pointed a stern finger at the issue I tend to most avoid: sex.

I consider myself to be an action writer, though I do delve deep into the characters; perhaps I should say ‘action and agony’ instead, because I’m fond of emotional torment, as I mentioned in a previous post.  Antagonistic relationships?  I’ve got those.  Friendships?  No problem.

Romances?

No.  That’s the point where I hide under my desk and hope it goes away.

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Posted in Stories, Writing | Tagged , , | 9 Comments

Pragmatic Horrible (Or, My Favorite Kind of Character)

Posted on February 18, 2014 by H. Anthe Davis

Hi there!  No content today.  Instead I want to babble about something I ended up pondering during most of my day-job: my favorite kind of character.  Some would look at the post I’m about to write and say ‘no, H., that sounds like your favorite kind of villain‘, but I beg to differ.

Probably because I’m a little bit Pragmatic Horrible myself.

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Posted in Fluff, Influences | 6 Comments