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Themes & Inspiration of My Fantasy

Ned Marcus

Maester
I blog on the inspiration for my stories and the themes behind them.

I often describe my location as the Hills of Shiding. Although it sounds like a fantasy location, it's real. My second novel is a kind of journey to the centre of the planet, and I imagined the old, enclosed market near my house existing deep beneath the surface. The rich nature of the hills has also seeps into the stories.

Here's my post about Shiding.
 

Ned Marcus

Maester
I've used my martial arts experience to help me develop my magical systems, and surprisingly (to me) my post on Martial Magic has made it into the first page of search results on Yahoo and Bing. Don't care too much about the pictures of me practicing :) the point of the article is simply to show how it's possible to take regular activities and use them in fantasy world building.
 

Ned Marcus

Maester
I've recently signed up to Masterclass (some of you will probably have seen their ads on FB) for their classes on writing. But some of the other classes are great, and some of them remind me of some of the reasons I write. One such class is by Jane Goodall on Conservation.

In this article, Green Aina, I talk about a long short story I wrote (Young Aina) which was influenced by some of my concerns for the environment.
 

Ned Marcus

Maester
Here's a short story I entered in a contest (over at Fantasy Faction). I came joint second. Anyway, here's the story, The Boatmen, on my site. I've included the picture of an Indian coracle (to show how big they can get—and I've seen bigger). I tweaked the ending ;)
 

Ned Marcus

Maester
Fantasy often concerns itself with good vs. evil, and sometimes with the nature of good and evil, and I thought it'd be interesting to collect some good and evil quotes—some of which have informed the nature of evil in my stories.
 

Ned Marcus

Maester
I've put together all the cover designs (past & present) for my Blue Prometheus series if you're interested in taking a look. Two of the covers have made it to the finals of the 2019 Kobo Indie Book Contest. It's neck and neck at the moment with Young Aina in second place! Votes close at 3PM on the 31st.
 

skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
Voted. FWIW, I think your fantasy covers beat all the competition. Most of them were either muddy or hokey or just plain dull.
 

Ned Marcus

Maester
Thank you!

Young Aina came second in its category but because it got enough votes overall it's reached the grand final (for all genres combined). The competition is tougher now. If anyone still wants to vote, you can do so here.
 

Ned Marcus

Maester
I recently set myself a 30-day flash fiction challenge where I wrote or tried to write, a short story every day. It went quite well, and I wrote a story (a few times I deepened one) every day except two. You can read about my flash fiction challenge and what I learnt from it here.
 

BJ Swabb

Sage
Hey Ned, It be so cool if you could get your books into Books A Million. That is where I buy most of my books now a days. It's like a Barnes and Noble. I would totally go by your Prometeus books as they look really interesting. Young Aina looks really cool.
 
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