Hiatus over (sort of)

I’m still lacking the necessary reply, so I can’t make progress with Bane of Souls just yet, but have decided to fill the gap with some world-building.

The next two projects I’m looking at are a small(ish) stand-alone book and a series about a civil war. It’s quite enjoyable to try and piece together a nation, plotting which cities go where, how the climate and people differ and so on. I had a lot of the ideas either half-formed in my head or written down concisely already, so it’s going pretty well.

The theme of human subspecies is going to continue, with some slightly more divergent examples (for the civil war series, I may use just Kuhrisch, Dennish and Felarian for the stand-alone book).

Bane of Souls occurred almost entirely in a single city, Highford, so I was able to go into quite a bit of detail, a lot of which can be used for the other two projects. It’s useful for a writer to have done some world-building before going into the first draft because it helps smooth things out, and can provide inspiration when writer’s block threatens.

One of the most helpful pages I’ve found (well, saw on Chrons) was by S. John Ross about medieval demographics. Whilst not every fantasy world is medieval, quite a few are, and even if one isn’t the principles behind what Mr. Ross wrote are useful to know.

At the bottom of Mr. Ross’ page are a few links to calculators. Sadly one of the best is now defunct (if anyone knows if Derek Bryan has relocated his calculator, please do let me know) but most of them are still active.

I’ve done quite a bit of work regarding the major cities and the differing peoples of Denland, and plan to do some of the basics regarding just how big each city and region should be. Map-making’s always fun, and I’ve done the first of those (it’s mildly amusing that my artistic talent with computer-generated maps is as bad as when I’m drawing by hand).

So, whilst I’d prefer a swift reply so I can get on with publishing Bane of Souls, I’m at least keeping busy with related work and will hopefully be able to make a running start with whatever I do next.

Not sure how often I’ll be blogging from now until the New Year, but fret not if I’m a little quiet until January.

Thaddeus