Recent content by Insolent Lad

Being old-fashioned (or maybe just old) I do all my writing off-line, mostly using LibreOffice. Drafting on my laptop, comfortably on the couch, editing, formatting, and all the rest at my desktop in the office. Frequent back-ups via equally old-fashioned USB sticks. If you do need others to see...

Some world-building notes, mostly about gods: The Gods

Wrote quite a few when I was younger but they were mostly for fitness and bodybuilding magazines. The world has changed a lot since I was sending typewritten pages to editors.

Royal Road is supposedly better for fantasy-oriented writing (as well as, ah, 'spicy' stories) but it's hard to be noticed on any platform.

As much of Pratchett's writing, I think this should be taken as a tongue in cheek exaggeration. That doesn't mean there's no validity to it.

I can say I've never come up with a plot without first having a character to build it around. Only then can I figure out something for them to do.

Once I have a map I generally take the attitude 'this is your world, deal with it,' and build the narrative to match it. Just as I would when writing historical fiction. If nothing else, it makes it easier to move on with the story.

As in his pseudo-Chinese culture with Chinese-sounding names, he had to throw in someone named McSweeney.

One could always have an adopted human who thinks he's a dwarf, like Carrot Ironfoundersson in the Discworld novels. And Moorcock had a 'dwarf giant' (i.e. giant with dwarfism) in one of the tales.

I finally chose to ignore piracy of my books altogether and followed Cory Doctorow's example of giving away the ebooks. If nothing else, it simplified my life.

Ah, Asimov did a story with fairies as large insects, who ruled the world way, way back in time.

Actual 'little people' --- sprites and brownies and such -- have only shown up in my children's books and I went with the conventional choice of naming them for flowers and that sort of thing. Marjoram the sprite, Hob and Gob the brownies. Nettle and Nightshade the goblins. And so on. The elves...

Pixabay tends to be my first stop for art. Yeah, it has AI slop too but one can choose not to have it shown.

My fantasy is as realistic as I can make it. That way it's more believable. And I do write what is generally considered realism too; really, it's all kind of one.

There is a mix of fauna (and flora, for that matter) in my primary fantasy cycle. Some pretty much identical to what we know here, some prehistoric holdovers (both megalodon and mosasaurs swim the seas), some that have found there way in from other worlds, such as ghalun (ghouls, which are...