Selah Janel reveals her Visiting Hours! Visit the Shadow Realm -- at your own risk!

In the Shadow Realm, everything has a story.

A little girl’s tall tales foretell the end of the world. A monster becomes the hunted at a haunted attraction. Sacrifices aren’t what they seem and traditions are meant to be followed for a reason. Vampire siblings confront their past while fighting about their future. A woman struggles to remember who she is while her rescuers hide their family secret in the depths of their cellar. Love and loss are stitched together in strange ways on the prairie. A young boy finds an unlikely friend who can fit in the strangest of places.

In these pages lurk tales of time loops, travels gone wrong, revenge, strange memories, hard decisions, and new variations on old fairy tales. Take the time to visit all the shadowy places and reflect on what you find. Just make sure you know how to find your way out again.

Available on Amazon. 

Seth Tucker's Peanut Butter in His Chocolate

With a dark imagination and a love for action, Seth Tucker likes to think that he has mixed the two together to create a winning combination (much like peanut butter and chocolate). But he'll let you decide.

Tell us a bit about your most recent work.

My most recent release is called Rabenhaus. It's a gothic horror that mixes elements of Poe and Lovecraft. The story centers around a plague doctor that is called to the titular village where a mysterious plague is ravaging the area. He's not alone though as a secretive group of doctors spirits away the sick and dead into the surrounding forest. 

What are the themes and subjects you tend to revisit in your work?

Small-town horror and conspiracies of silence that exist in those communities have been a theme that started cropping up in my work most recently. A distrust of authority has been present from my very first novel. Given the climate of the last few decades, I can't imagine where that comes from. Lately, I've also been exploring loss and grief in my writings, but none of those works have been published yet. 

What happened in your life that prompted you to become a writer?

I learned I lacked any talent for drawing. As a lover of comic books, I wanted to tell stories in that medium. When I was 12, I wrote short stories to help me deal with those feelings of pre-pubescent helplessness. It was comforting to have a world where I controlled everything.

Kathryn Sullivan and a Dad's Love of Sci-Fi

Kathryn Sullivan has been writing science fiction and fantasy since she was 14 years old. Having read her father’s collection of sf and fantasy, she started writing her own. Any place and any object is at risk of appearing in her stories – the river bluffs surrounding Winona, MN, where she lives, can become the windswept cliffs of an alien planet or the deep mysterious woods of a fantasy tale. She is owned by a large cockatoo, who graciously allows her to write about other animals, as well as birdlike aliens.

Tell us a bit about your most recent work.

Talking to Trees is the sequel to The Crystal Throne. Both are portal fantasies, where kids from our world are pulled into a magical world with wizards and elves and talking horses.  Talking to Trees also has gryphons and trees that talk to those who can listen.

What are the themes and subjects you tend to revisit in your work?

I like to write portal fantasies.  But I also like to include psi powers, whether they are considered science fiction or fantasy, clashes with other cultures, and people trying to do the right thing.

What happened in your life that prompted you to become a writer? 

My dad's science fiction collection.  I had read everything in it (back in the days when it was possible to read all the science fiction available) at the age of 14 and decided that I could write it as well.

What inspires you to write?

So many things. Soundtracks. Looking at a forest and thinking about who or what lives there. The works in the Art Show at a science fiction convention. I wrote one short story when I looked around my college campus and tried to picture an alien trying to navigate it. Science and archeology discoveries.  

Debbie Viguie: Always Been a Writer

Debbie Viguié has been writing for most of her life and holds a degree in creative writing from U.C. Davis. She has had numerous appearances on the New York Times Bestseller list for the Wicked series as well as cracking the yearly top 10 Christian book list for Booklist with the Psalm 23 series.

I met Debbie at Stellar Con not long ago, and I thought she was pretty awesome, so I figured you needed to meet her too. 

Tell us a bit about your most recent work.

I just released Celtic Charms, book 2 in the Twin Destinies series, featuring the world-famous Harp Twins. I depict fictionalized versions of the ladies as the heroes in the stories, fighting the forces of darkness. They create albums of original music to go with each book. We have all three been pushing each other creatively and it has been great fun!

What are the themes and subjects you tend to revisit in your work?

The struggle between light and darkness, people being able to accomplish more than they ever dreamed, family is who you choose

What happened in your life that prompted you to become a writer? 

I’ve always been a writer. I started writing poetry and short stories about my toys when I was very, very young. Then my third-grade teacher pushed creative writing a lot in her class. She told my parents that they should encourage me to be a writer, which I was already thinking about.

What inspires you to write? 

Everything I see and hear inspires me. An interesting song lyric, a weird conversation, a “what if” sort of daydream. I find inspiration everywhere I turn. As for the actual exercise of writing itself, it’s a compulsion. I can’t NOT write. Even when I’m on vacation, it just comes out of me. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve taken home napkins from restaurants with a paragraph or notes for a book scrawled on them.

[Link] What Is LitRPG for Writers (and How Do I Get Started Writing It)?

Bestselling LitRPG author Matt Dinniman answers what LitRPG is (for those who don't know) and shares five tips on getting started in this style (not genre) of writing.

by Matt Dinniman

Okay, picture this. You’re sitting down at your desk, and a portal appears in the wall of your office. A mysterious wizard steps from the gate and announces, “Hey! You! If you want to save the realm, you need to complete this quest. You need to write a novel. And it needs to be a LitRPG!” He hands you a pen and a notebook, and he disappears back into the portal with a puff of smoke.

(You, of course, want to save the realm. One must never ignore quests bestowed by mysterious portal wizards. You’ve heard of LitRPG before, but you’re not really sure exactly what it is. Doesn’t it have something to do with video games? All you really know is that the term suddenly seems everywhere, and more importantly, LitRPG books seem to be really hot right now. And now that you have a quest to write one, you better get started. Here are five tips on how to save the day.

Step One. Know what LitRPG is in the first place.

Okay, okay, this sounds pretty obvious, right? Like it should be something the wizard tells you before we even get to the five tips part. But here’s the thing. Knowing exactly what you’re getting yourself into is absolutely crucial for success in this style of writing. Are these games? Are they like those Choose Your Own Adventure books? And why the heck are we calling it a “style of writing” and not a genre?

LitRPG stands for Literary Role-Playing Game, so it’s not surprising that people who are new to the term think these books are games. Or Choose Your Own Adventure Style books. They are not. They are just regular novels, usually with no reader interaction. And while many people call it a genre, they’re not, technically, a genre, either.

Read the full article: https://www.writersdigest.com/write-better-fiction/what-is-litrpg-for-writers-and-how-do-i-get-started-writing-it

Movie Reviews for Writers: Fantastic Britain

What is it about Britain and the U.K. that fosters such a rich history of fantasy literature? Not only modern best-sellers like Harry Potter, but also classics like C.S. Lewis' Narnia books, Tolkien's Middle Earth books, George McDonald's children and adult fantasies, and Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. Or does it begin long before that with the country's legends of King Arthur and his knights?

Or, is it as host Robin Bennett claims, that because of the rigid outer life of manners and mannerisms, the inner life of British writers is so filled with fantastic eccentricities?

Or perhaps it has more to do with Britain being geologically separated and having such a long history?

Or finally, does it have more to do with colonialism? Just like Britain took opium and other resources from countries, they also plundered the mythology and legends of the countries they suppressed. 

You can watch the documentary to find out for yourself. What I'm concerned about is more what this whimsical documentary has to say to us as writers. 

On that front, there's quite a bit to cover. 

Perhaps my favorite bit from this documentary hits at about the halfway point. It says quite adamantly that a write "can only get away with one big lie." Everything else must be true. For example, the narrator goes on to say, in Narnia the one big lie is a wardrobe that takes children to another world. After that, the characters must act and interact as if real. I love that. I think that works not just for fantasy but other genres as well. The suspension of disbelief can only stretch so far, after all. 

The next point is that of why Fantasy books, and books in general, matter. Sometimes a book is a child's (or an adult's I would add) only friend, a secret friend. I can vouch for this in my life. As a child I hid myself in my room during my years of having few friends and escaped into books, particularly my Childcraft Encyclopedias and my Illustrated Classics by Verne, Dickens, and Wells. You never know. That book you're writing at this very moment might be the safe haven some reader is looking for. 

The importance of Fantasy can't be overstated, regardless of how some wish to relegate it to childish flights of fancy. Without the safe otherworld provided by Fantasy literature, it might be too risky or painful to address certain topics. Fantasy can be a way of investigating things that are real, and perhaps things that are too sore to address directly. Dune (a sci-fi fantasy of the first order) deals with corporate greed in a way that makes readers think, maybe more than something more realistically based (like Upton Sinclair's The Jungle). Lord of the Rings can tell us more about the nature of humanity to embrace power for power's sake than a thousand biographies about famous politicians. 

There's also a great nod to the steadfastness of the writers themselves. After all, any author who can continue through the editing process without stopping and calling it quits is already a champion storyteller. And what process is that? Writing the first draft. Editing it. Finished the final draft to send to the publisher. Changing it yet again for a structural edit. After that, more changes for a story edit. Then a line edit. All through that the author is continuing to go back and redo work. That takes tremendous dedication.

The best way to close this review is with a quote from Joanne Harris, author of Chocolat, that sums up the power of the Fantasy story--dreaming has no boundaries. Therefore, neither should dreamers who put these dreams onto paper and into digital devices. 

Doug Van Belle: Something Worth Sharing

Douglas A. Van Belle is an award-winning author and screenwriter, and winner of New Zealand's prestigious Sir Julius Vogel Award. His recent work includes science fiction novels The Barking Death Squirrels, The Care and Feeding of Your Lunatic Mage, and the YA title, The Kahutahuta. He spends his days as a Senior Lecturer at Victoria University of Wellington, where his research includes the politics of crises and role science fiction in society, which are related in surprising ways. Also an artisan bladesmith, he is a passionate advocate for the therapeutic value of playing with fire and pounding the living daylights out of white-hot steel.

Tell us a bit about your latest work. 

A World Adrift was published by Wordfire Press in October, and I guess you could call it my breakout novel.  Wordfire probably still counts as an indie but it has an established global distribution chain and a marketing program to match the big publishers. Perhaps more importantly, it’s run by a best-selling science fiction author, Kevin J. Anderson, who created it specifically for science fiction authors and fans. He knows the genre and its fans better than any other publisher out there so I suspected that I might have something special when he asked to see it even though Wordfire was closed to submissions. Then, just a few hours after getting his hands on a typo-laden monstrosity of a first draft, he emailed me a contract and I knew I’d finally managed to take that next step. 

A World Adrift is set in the skies of Venus, roughly 800 years after humans first settled the habitable layer about 55 kilometers above the surface. It’s a steam-punkish world of Zepplin cities, kitesurfing airships, empires, war, and economic collapse. But unlike most things you might call steampunk, everything in the story is real or realistic.  That habitable layer in the Venusian atmosphere exists, and all the steampunk elements are logical and realistic projections of the science, engineering, and socio-economic realities of living there.

The novel is about the people caught up in a coup, and again, every element is as accurate and realistic as it can be. I’m an academic who has spent decades studying the human side of the politics of crises and disasters, and that informs every aspect of the plot. Still, the politics and that plot are the framework, not the story.  The stories are about the people; reluctant heroes thrown into the breach; decent people swept onto the wrong side; poor choices; plans that fall apart; improvisations that go wrong; and clever solutions that win reprieves but fall short of resolutions.

Drama is personal. Stories are personal.

What are the themes and subjects you tend to revisit in your work?

My first instinct is to say that I don’t revisit themes. I have an extended development process for novels and screenplays that involves a lot of exploration and a lot of writing of scenes that I think of as concept sketches, few of which ever make it into the novel or screenplay. Through that process, I discover the themes and the ideas I want to write about, and they reflect how the story evolves and how the characters take shape.

However, one of my more philosophically inclined friends recently introduced me to a small group of fans by describing my fiction as reflections of the tragic comedy that is humanity, and I’m starting to think he may have something there. Humor is and always has been a big part of my fiction, but when that friend referenced tragic comedy, he was talking about the countless ironies inherent to the clash between humanity and the human condition.  I bring a lot of my background in politics, psychology, sociology, and the sciences into that, but that’s all stage and setting for characters trapped between what they think should be and what is, which is the tragedy comedy that is humanity.

What happened in your life that prompted you to become a writer?

Nothing. And that’s not a cop-out. Like someone who always had a flare for drawing, or could just always sing, I’ve always just been a writer. Fiction has always been the just-for-fun part of that, and somewhere along the way it evolved into something worth sharing. There’s been a hell of a lot of work I’ve had to put into learning the craft of writing fiction, and that came after realizing that I had stories worth sharing, but there was no big bang event.

What inspires you to write?

When it comes to fiction, nothing. And that’s an actual answer. I desperately want to spend every minute of every day playing with stories and ideas and the only thing it takes to get me writing is an hour or two when there’s nothing on the schedule that I can’t put off.

Honestly, I have to wonder why the people who struggle to find the motivation or the inspiration to write fiction bother. If you aren’t writing fiction simply for the pure artistic joy of creating something, why are you doing it?  Spoiler alert, if you’re doing it for the money, fame, or the respect it brings your way, I have some bad news for you.

What would be your dream project?

A World Adrift is pretty close. Hard science fiction where I didn’t have to make a single compromise on the science to create a wow kind of world, and a story that just about wrote itself, that is my dream project. However, I’d have to say that if I could find that in a big TV project, that would be better. I’m a far better screenwriter than I am a novelist and to get the opportunity to write something like A World Adrift for the screen would be the dream. I’ve done a lot of uncredited ghostwriting and script fixing for a NZ studio, but that’s just work. Getting the chance to create something for the screen is the dream.

If you have any former project to do over to make it better, which one would it be, and what would you do? 

That’s a good one, one I’ve never heard before, and the answer is obvious. My novella, Breathe.

There are tons of little things I would like to change in my novel, Barking Death Squirrels, particularly some of the details around the central female character, but that’s just a re-edit with a competent editor. I received a lot of useful editorial input on the stories that made up the chapters in Barking Death Squirrels, so the editor for the novel couldn’t do much damage, but that also meant that I couldn’t see how unprofessional they were until after they edited Breathe. It wasn’t just the embarrassing mess they made of the copy-editing; they made countless editorial changes that they didn’t mark up.  I probably still should have seen that her changes transformed the hapless, hopeless, and tragic romantic idiot into a creepy AF horror story cliché of a villain; or the way that cutting some of the clever little things that the overly chipper woman did turned her into a bubble-headed idiot; or worst of all, the way cutting a few critical sentences introducing the woman trying to keep the spark in her marriage turned her into a misogynistic cliché; but with all the drafts an author holds in their head when they’re reviewing copy edits, it’s pretty damn tough to spot things that are no longer in there when they aren’t signaled. 

Fortunately, I just might get a redo on Breathe.  A NZ filmmaker picked up an option on the story and I fixed the issues when I wrote the adaptation. It’s not clear if I’ll get to expand the novella into a novel, but so far, that’s part of plan, and if I do, I’ll fix the issues there as well as add the new story elements from the adaptation.

What writers have influenced your style and technique?

Unironically, I’m going to say “all of them.” Obviously, I haven’t read all of the authors out there, but when it comes to Fantasy and Science Fiction, I’m about as close to that mark as anyone might be able to manage.  I’m also pretty omnivorous when it comes to reading and I get something out of all of it. Even the trashy stuff that’s so bad I can’t finish it has an influence. I can’t tell you how many novels I’ve abandoned and then subsequently I wondered if this, that, or the other thing might have made it work.

Having said that, Larry Niven was huge. I read Ringworld back when I was far too young to read Ringworld and the whole idea of building a world changed everything for me.

Where would you rank writing on the "Is it an art or it is a science continuum?" Why?

Art, no question, but like any form of art, there is a tremendous amount of craft, that you might call the science, involved.  You can’t really paint in an artistic way until you understand layering, color theory, perspective, stroke, and texture. Writing fiction is the same. It’s an art built on a science of technique that we call craft.

What is the most difficult part of your artistic process?

The three weeks or so after finishing a big project. The stretch run on a novel, screenplay, textbook, or research monograph is so intense and so all-consuming that finishing it can feel like stepping out an airlock. Even after dozens of books, finishing that final draft leaves me lost and hopeless. I wake up the next morning certain that I will never again have a good idea and spiral down from there.  A lot of the writers I know save some little projects for those dark weeks after the novel, but that doesn’t work for me. I just have to ride it out. I kind of sleepwalk through at least a few weeks where I can’t do anything and can’t get anything done. It’s pretty damn bleak.

How do your writer friends help you become a better writer? Or do they not?

In every way you can imagine, and this question is just begging for some name-dropping, so let me oblige. Robert J. Sawyer treated me like his equal from the moment I published my first story, and I can’t possibly say how huge that was. David Brin taught me more than I can say about being the professional writer that Rob inspired me to be. David Gerold taught me how to appreciate the community that is science fiction. Chatting black-hole physics and chaos theory with Stephen R. Donaldson back when I was in graduate school showed me how a writer extracts story elements out of knowledge. The entire team at Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine was always there to encourage me to play around with ideas, push things to the edge of absurdity, and take creative risks. Melinda Snodgrass was generous in helping me build a professional network at science fiction conventions. Greg Bear whispered in my ear that I needed to enjoy everything that went with being a professional, and then he went and showed me how.  Larry Niven’s writings inspired me, and now that I can call him an acquaintance, his humility is just as inspirational as his writing. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen him waiting in a queue at a convention when he could just walk up to the front and get waived through like a VIP. Steven Barnes taught me to find my own way, find my own voice, and find my own process. Kevin J. Anderson taught me more about the business side of the profession than most writers ever learn. And a special nod has to go to my fellow Kiwi, Lee Murray. Relentlessly supportive, she doesn’t hesitate to throw biting critiques at my work. She taught me the difference between style and self-indulgently bloated prose and for that, I will always be grateful.

What does literary success look like to you?

Pretty much, this. The instant you can say that writing fiction is a bit more than a hobby, you are a literary success, you are the one in a thousand, and I think I finally hit that mark with A World Adrift. I’d love to build a big audience. I’d love to have my agent land me a multi-book contract with one of the big publishing houses. I’d love to get a screen production of one of my works off the ground. I’d love to build my fiction into a second career, but I can honestly say that I appreciate this moment for exactly what it is.

Any other upcoming projects you would like to plug?

Zombies From Mars. It’s a reworking of one of my short stories into a scripted, radio-drama podcast and the first episodes should drop in early 2024. I keep saying I write fiction just for the fun of it and this version of Zombies is the most fun I have had in ages.  It’s a biting critique of bureaucracy and capitalism, masquerading as over-the-top absurdist comedy. On top of that, not only did I get to be involved in just about every part of the production, I got to work with my daughter, who’s one of the co-stars. I knew she was talented, but I had no idea she was that talented, and discovering that was priceless.

I’ll shout out on social media when that goes live, but I’ve also just put my next novel, Killing Beauty in the hands of my agent. That’s a dark thriller set in a future where medical technology has advanced to the point where everyone can live forever. I’ve also just been offered the chance to adapt a prominent author’s biggest novel into a TV series, which isn’t quite getting something of my own produced, but it could be big if all the other pieces can be put in place. So, let’s hope.

For more information, visit:

https://www.facebook.com/dvbpleasantlyinsane

Sunday Funnies: Clearing It Up

 

Swords, Magic, and the Armor of Author David Wright

A Georgia Bulldog and Atlanta United fan living in Middle Tennessee, David Wright grew up on comic books and Swords & Sorcery novels, where he gained an early passion for storytelling. Ever since he read Dragons of Autumn Twilight by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman in 1984, he knew he wanted to write an epic medieval fantasy series. He's also a friend, and I think you should get to know him too!

What prompted you to start this series?

David: Well, I've had a lifelong love for swords & sorcery fantasy and Arthurian legends. This includes playing 1st Ed. AD&D and Red Box/Keep on the Borderlands Basic D&D in the early 80s at the very height of the "Satanic Panic" media scare surrounding the game at the time. I found all the hoopla ridiculous because as a player I knew how innocent and fun the game was.

Now fast forward 20 years and the Lord of the Rings movies are being praised for their (alleged) Christian themes by some of the same type of conservative watchdog groups that once condemned Dungeons & Dragons. I found that hilariously ironic and also as equally ridiculous as the early 80s scare.

In other words, I didn't see the Devil in D&D and I didn't see Jesus in Lord of the Rings. Now, I know it's possible to play a very dark campaign, but I also know it is not intrinsic to the game and there's room for something quite the opposite. I've always seen D&D as an exercise in collaborative improv storytelling and that always appealed to me.

Now I should make it clear that I am a professing Christian and I do my best every day to live accordingly (with full acknowledgment that I fail often and sometimes spectacularly so), but it is quite interesting to me that so many conservative groups and a subset of Christians have such discomfort with the entire genre of Fantasy. I've spent time pondering that. How is a fantastic story blasphemous or threatening to the Faith? It's interesting how quickly the conversation then turns to the idea of religion or the common use in Fantasy of a polytheistic pantheon. There just seemed to be *something* that intertwines the subjects of Fantasy and spirituality in people's minds, for whatever reason that I can't explain.

I simply felt like this disconnect and this discomfort was where the dramatic conflict could be. I wanted to lean into the idea of Christianity existing in a fantasy world where magic is real. I wanted to set out to disprove the Satanic Panic of the early 80s while knowing full well the Bible warns us strongly against witchcraft and divination.

By the mid-80s I was an assistant DM and helped develop the original campaign setting that we used. In 1984, the original Dragonlance Chronicles came out and I knew right away that I wanted to one day adapt D&D adventures into a novel. Now, it was in no way a Christian-themed campaign. It wasn't until the LOTR movies that I started considering writing a novel, but once I did hit upon the idea of that central dramatic conflict, I remembered our old campaign setting.

So very quickly I had a theme and a setting. And I even brought in three characters that were PCs in our mid-80s campaign. The rest of the cast (including the main character) and all of the plot were created after I started developing the novel series. This included role-playing sessions with just me and a single player, a friend of mine who helped me develop the main character. And through our game sessions, many of the series' action set pieces were devised and improvised.

I developed story ideas throughout the first half of the 2000s, spending all of that time not thinking it was very realistic to actually put out a novel. That all changed with Van Allen Plexico launching White Rocket Books and publishing his Sentinels series, beginning (I believe) in 2006. Suddenly, a novel seemed very realistic and that really lit my fire and I finally got serious about it all. I ended up getting a tremendous amount of support and encouragement from Van, and it is likely none of these books would have ever seen the light of day without him. So big shout out to Van!

Is there something in particular about knights and the genre that draws you to it? What is that?

David: There must be, but I'm not sure I can articulate it. I saw a production of Camelot at a young age and my Dad raised me on Errol Flynn's Adventures of Robin Hood and the Robert Taylor Ivanhoe film. I just always loved that romanticized idea of the Age of Chivalry. I was particularly drawn to the King Arthur and Robin Hood stories. But then you add in fantasy elements like wizards, dragons, and magic swords and how can anyone resist? Having a great D&D group at the right impressionable age probably really cemented things for me.

It's rich ground for themes revolving around duty and honor and other heroic ideals. It also lends itself easily to epic stories with the fates of entire kingdoms often at stake. What's not to like? Knights are cool.

You have said before that you wanted to write something that talked about faith but not as a direct allegory, such as Lewis, or to a lesser degree, Tolkien. Why did you want to avoid that and what did you want to say about the life of faith?

David: Well, to clarify, while I do not think I've written in allegory, I've also not done anything to hide the idea that this story very much is set in a world that has had Christianity introduced to it. The backstory is that at the fall of Camelot, Merlin cast the final act of magic our world would ever see to send Sir Galahad away. Galahad is the knight of the round table that found the Holy Grail and in my version of the story, Mordred was after it in that final battle at Camelot that saw him kill King Arthur. Honoring Arthur's final wish, Merlin kept the Grail safe by sending it with Galahad through a hastily summoned portal.  That portal took the knight to the world of Lanis and he happened to have his Bible with him.

My story opens several hundred years after that and we see that Galahad spent the rest of his days traveling and spreading the Word and now there is some form of his religion from the World of Adam that has taken root and grown prevalent. Before he died, he was given a vision of basically a global reboot, similar to the Great Flood account in Genesis in which the world is all but destroyed for the purpose of starting over. This prophecy of his became known as Galahad's Doom.

But I did write the story to not be preachy, to not be some kid-friendly, contrite Sunday School lesson. I very much was concerned with writing an epic-scale action-adventure that would appeal to everyone regardless of their beliefs, or absence of beliefs. Partially to that end, the names God and Jesus never appear in the books. The words Christianity and Bible never appear in the books. It's not that these ideas are avoided, but that different nomenclature has taken root in this world of Lanis.

This is a cool action adventure first, albeit one that just happens to be informed by my personal faith. This is not written at a juvenile level; I wrote for me. The story I wanted to read didn't exist, so I wrote it. There's a large cast, a complex plot with multiple subplots, and shades-of-gray characters. Not every good guy is a believer, and not every believer is a good guy.

Think of it like this: Krynn -- the world featured in the Dragonlance series-- includes gods such as Paladine and Reorx that I do not actually believe in. Yet, I'm able to accept that they are the gods of that story and I'm still able to very much enjoy it. If someone out there believes in Jesus about as much as they believe in Paladine then they can still enjoy my story, just like we all do with Dragonlance. It doesn't have to be any different than that and, by the way, the story is awesome. I'm especially proud of the third book in the trilogy, The Armor of God, that just came out. If you'll come along for the ride, I promise you'll be blown away. I'm just so extremely pleased with how the final book turned out and how the whole series ends. It is so worth the investment of reading the first two books to get to it. The best part is I am 100 percent convinced that every single member of my large cast got exactly the right ending. I can't wait to hear back from readers.

As for what I want to say about the life of faith, my themes are universal, dealing with duty, honor, temptation, corruption, and redemption. And in Galen Griffon, I have a protagonist who struggles with feelings of unworthiness and is forced to choose between serving his god or his king. Church or State.

His arc in the first book, My Brother's Keeper, is very much a metaphor for my own journey. (Even though I've never had a magic sword. As far as I know.)

What is your work schedule during the time you bust out a novel the length of these?

David: Ha! Well, for anyone who's been following along, it's no secret that years and years have gone by between each of my novels. That's one reason I'm so happy to have completed the trilogy: now, all the delays are behind me and people can start the series and not be left hanging.

I wrote the first book in just under a year during a time when I was traveling a lot for my job. Hours and days spent in airports and hotels, away from my family, gave me plenty of time to work rather quickly.

By the time of the second book, I had a different job and had a regular life of coming home to a family every day who needed me for the boring real-life stuff.  So I just wrote when I could and never really figured out a good writing schedule.

With this third book, I developed an idea for a new workflow approach that I think could have helped me a lot, but as it turned out I didn't need it, so I haven't tested this idea yet. So my biggest challenge with sitting down to write is having the time to go back over my notes and what has been written before and just needing a long ramp to tap back into that creative vibe to be able to start knocking out scenes again. I came up with an approach to minimize or possibly eliminate that long ramp. Maybe detailing that idea could be a subject for a different interview, but suffice it to say that the third book came to me so easily that "ramping up" was never an issue.

While this third book has come out several years after the previous one, it was actually written in a trio of 60-day bursts. I first cracked the story in 2018 and wrote about 30k words in just a couple of months. Then a bunch of Real Life happened. I got a new job which involved a big move to a different state and I also lost my laptop. I knew I had backed up my work to Dropbox but I couldn't restore access to that account so for a long time I thought my work was lost. Luckily, that got resolved. Then in early 2020, I opened up the project again and it all just started pouring out of me. I couldn't type fast enough. It all came to me so fully realized that I just had to get it all down... until I got to the end of the second act.

Then I came to a screeching halt. I had two ways in my head for possible endings, but I also didn't know what role my large supporting cast could have in the final act. So I walked away and trusted my characters to solve it for me. I was not the creator of this story, I have been merely the reporter. All this stuff has really happened, it has just been my job to discover it and present it in the coolest way possible. Eventually, a character whispered the answer in my ear one night and I was off to the races again.

I've never had writing go so easily for me as with the writing of The Armor of God. As the third installment, it was just a race to the finish line and the pace of the book is exactly that. It's just relentless with the only levity coming from my bard character's storyline. I'm proud of that one. A true bard's adventure where winning the day requires writing the perfect song. (If it all lent itself to dozens of hidden Beach Boys references, well, I just can't help that. I'm just the reporter, after all.)

What are the books and who are the authors who influenced you in your growth as a writer?

David: My four main inspirations for the Galahad's Doom series are: L'morte d'Artur by Sir Thomas Malory, The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis, and The Dragonlance Chronicles by Weis and Hickman.

(I pay homage to all of these with a quartet of redshirts named Malory, Lewis, Reuel, and Krynn).

I also owe a huge debt to Van Allen Plexico and all the New Pulp and indie authors I know.

I have studied Joseph Campbell and also found studying short stories to be an easy way to discern story structure. To that end, I read a lot of Poe and O Henry.

Tell us about your other work too.

David: The books in my Galahad's Doom trilogy (My Brother's Keeper, Marching As To War, and The Armor of God) are my first three novels. In addition to those, I have had short stories included in The Sentinels: Alternate Visions and Gideon Cain: Demon Hunter by White Rocket books and in Hero's Best Friend from Seventh Star Press.

We'll see what's next. I have both Untold Tale-style short story ideas and prequel novel ideas for the world of Galahad's Doom. I'm also definitely open to the idea of inviting other writers into my sandbox for an anthology. So if that sounds good to any writers out there (including you, Sean!) then reach out and let me know.

In addition to my writing, I have a YouTube channel called American Soccer Quick Kicks where I discuss the Men's National Team, MLS, and the rules of the game to casual fans of the sport, or just soccer-curious sports fans. It's all short-form content: no deep dives, usually just ten minutes or so to keep you updated and then get you back to your day.

Where can we find out more about you and your work?

David: My website is http://www.galahadsdoom.com

My YouTube is http://www.youtube.com/@americansoccerquickkicks

On Twitter, I am @defdave

Now that the series is complete, I hope to devote more time and effort to marketing. I thank you for this interview. I'm open to other bloggers and podcasters out there and I'll be looking at getting into whatever library shows, lit fairs, and retailer expos I can manage to find regionally.

What's the best advice you ever received about writing?

David: Observe life. Our world is too rich to ever have boring characters.

Also, make sure writing stays fun. Take pleasure in language. Relish it, savor it. Wield it like a scalpel... or maybe a Sword +2.

But what really unlocked me as a writer was understanding story structure. Take that seriously. Understand what makes stories work. Once I got my head around structure, the rest came easy for me.

[Link] Animals have dwindled in novels since 1835. Is fiction undergoing its own extinction event?

by Piers Torday

A new study argues that a disconnect with nature has led to fewer creatures appearing in fiction. But is that really the case?

A recent study in People and Nature claims that animals are being written out of novels at a similar rate to their extinction in the real world. The German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research searched the entire online Project Gutenberg archive of 60,000 texts, written between 1705 and 1969. They found that since 1835, animal usage in fiction – other than domesticated beasts such as horses and dogs or “threat” animals such as bears or lions – has dwindled to a fraction of its former propensity. Professor Christian Wirth, the study’s senior author, argues that this has implications for our response to the climate crisis: “We can only halt the loss of biodiversity by a radical change in awareness.”

I think he’s right, but not because animals have been written out of novels. They’ve just been written in the wrong way.

Like all such headline-making research papers, context is everything. I am not sure that public-domain books only, written in English only, from a western canon only, are fully representative of the rich and increasingly human-diverse fictional world today. But the decline in actual biodiversity is terrifyingly real. According to the latest reports from the UN and WWF, we have not only lost 60% of animal populations since 1970, but one million animal and plant species are at risk of extinction if we do not act now.

Has that profound sense of loss in fact made animals more attractive to fiction writers? There is certainly no shortage of animals in the world of children’s literature. My latest book, The Wild Before – about tackling biodiversity decline – has a hare as a main character, and an animal cast, following in the tradition of books such as Watership Down. This past year alone has seen critically acclaimed children’s books starring a stranded polar bear, a haunting Greenland shark and a magical talking stray cat.

Read the full article: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/oct/01/are-animals-disappearing-from-novels-piers-torday-wild-before?CMP=twt_books_b-gdnbooks

Tamara Lowery and the Waves of Darkness

I can't remember which convention I was attending when I met Tamary Lowery, but I can tell you it wasn't the last we'd attend together. She's such a stalwart on the convention scene that no doubt most of my blog readers have probably already met her themselves. Still, for those of you who need to re-ignite your acquaintanceship with her or meet her for the first time, this one's for you. 

Tell us about your latest work. 

There are 2, currently. I recently finished the first draft of Hunting the Dragon, book 8 in the Waves of Darkness series and first book in the second story arc for the series. The first 7 books comprised the Sisters of Power arc. While they have been out of publication since I broke with my publisher, Gypsy Shadow Publishing, the rights were immediately reverted to me. I'm in the process of revising and reformatting them for self publication. 

As for book 8: it picks up with the final events of book 7,  Maelstrom of Fate, and starts the Daughters of the Dragon arc, which will also take place over 7 books. 

The other recent work is artistic in nature. I was commissioned to do the face card portraits for a 5 suit Dragon Poker game. This is a companion game for an authorized Dragonriders of Pern LARP available from Antiquarian Boardgames. 

What happened in your life to prompt you to become a writer?

It was a natural offshoot of my need to be creative. I love to read, and, like so many others, loved to create my own fanfic in my head  ...decades before the internet existed. While my original career choice was to become a journalist, I eventually decided to become an honest liar instead and write fiction. The tools and access afforded by the internet led me to finally go for it. 

What inspires you to write?

I find story ideas and inspiration in various places. Sometimes it's a news article. Sometimes a stray odd bit in magazines like National Geographic or Smithsonian find their way into my writing. Sometimes TV shows trigger an idea. Often my husband tosses out an idea. Mostly though, it's because I'm that special kind of not-right-in-the-head person who HAS to write. I truly enjoy writing. Luckily, having to wear a face mask at work keeps my coworkers from being disturbed by my evil grin when a particularly wicked story idea occurs to me. 

What are the themes and subjects you tend to revisit in your works?

Adventure, horror, sex and sexuality, and the fact that all sorts of side issues keep cropping up and interrupting my main characters' efforts to complete their Important Task or to find out what it even is. 

What would be your dream project? 

I haven't got a clue. Wait  ...yes I do. I would love to get a story accepted for an anthology I've been invited to and have it actually see publication IN MY LIFETIME. So far, something has halted publication of every anthology I've submitted to. 

What writers have influenced your style and technique?

Anne McCaffrey, definitely. I wish I could be even half as good at world building and characterization as she was. Several authors I've encountered over the past decade or so at conventions have provided guidance and advice, either directly or on writing track panels. I also have tried to make my own unique voice in my writing, and I've noticed the development changes over the course of my book series. 

If you have any former project to do over and make it better, which one would it be, and what would you do?

Well, I'm already revamping the first 7 books of Waves of Darkness for re-release; revising to fix a few stylistic issues I've become aware of during my growth as awriter, reformatting for a different print size, and commissioning new cover art. I would like to redo season 1 of The Adventures of Pigg & Woolfe with new, art and professional covers. I also plan to up my marketing game on all my projects. 2020 kind of did a number on my creativity and energy levels. 

Where would you rank writing on the "is it an art or is it a science" continuum? Why?

I think it depends on what type of writing. Both really apply to fiction, because you not only need a flair for good storytelling, but you need to research what your readers want, and you definitely need a good grasp of grammar and vocabulary. One of the few stories I DNF'd had good bones, but the author was too busy showing off his vocabulary of obscure, rarely used words. You don't want to dumb down your writing, but you don't want your readers having to go through several Google searches per paragraph just to understand WHAT they're reading. 

What is the most difficult part of your artistic process?

Keeping track of story ideas when I come up with them at work, when I don't have access to scrap paper or my phone and have to stay conscious of my surroundings and the task at hand for safety purposes. 

How do your writer friends help you become a better writer? Or do they not?

I'm fortunate and privileged to know or follow a wide variety of writers, both in person and online. Granted, conventions are about the only times I get to interact in person, since my work schedule pretty much rules out attending local writing group meetings. Still, I get good advice at cons, and I learn quite a lot from news letters, blogs, and videos put out by other writers sharing their journey. I pick up various tips about style, current tropes, publishing processes (both traditional and indie), and what pitfalls and mistakes to avoid. I see what does and doesn't work for them, and I figure out my own methods from these. I never ever allow myself to be so arrogant as to think I have learned everything useful I can. 

What does literary success look like to you?

Hitting a best seller list would be nice, but it is not my definition of success. THAT is getting confirmation that people enjoy reading what I write as much as I enjoy writing it. I hit that mark when I encountered a fan online through a mutual friend during a Fandom discussion of Girl Genius. I made a mention in the thread about the book I was working on at the time, and she started fangirling on my series. She's up in Oregon, the opposite corner of the country from me, and had been introduced to my books by a friend of hers. I recently made her my alpha reader. 

Any other upcoming projects you would like to plug?

I really want to get my Waves of Darkness books into audio books. I've had interest expressed to me about this for a few years now. I still have some research to do on my options (besides ACX and Audible). But, I eventually WILL get this done. 

For more information, visit:

https://talowery.wordpress.com for my blog, character profiles, book list, excerpts and deleted scenes, and a pretty nifty virtual convention dealers' room under the Pirates Cove & Hucksters Haven heading. 

https://facebook.com/Waves.of.Darkness

https://plurk.com/Viksbelle 

Urban, High, Low, or Something Else? Writers on Fantasy...

For our newest writer's roundtable, let's look at the fantastic.

Although the genres are blending and the publishing categories seem to shift, what are the key differences between general fantasy, high fantasy, urban fantasy, and magical realism?

John Linwood Grant: Magical realism I'd probably set aside, as more akin to various 'liminal' and 'weird fiction' labels. It's an area where stories can be most strange, but would not be immediately recognizable to many who would describe themselves as 'fantasy fans' Sadly for this question, that's my main area a lot of the time. I might distinguish between secondary world fantasy and historical fantasy - the former not relying directly on certain aspects of human history, biology or geography; the latter being closely linked to re-imaginings of various cultures and societies of the past. With magic. Or dragons. Etc. There's also mock-secondary world fantasy, which relies on stuff we know but pretends to be different and just sticks extra moons in the sky. Urban fantasy is a thing of many faces, from teens with magic fingers to slavering werewolves in Chicago. Hugely variable.

Ian Totten: I suppose it depends on what you're going for when it comes to genre specific fantasy. I always thought of high fantasy as being in the vein of LOTR or The Sword of Truth series. My own series is labeled dark fantasy, but I recently had a reader tell me they thought of it as high fantasy so I guess it's subjective to the individual. As for the other sub-genres, I admit to knowing little about them.

Hilaire Barch: I think the others covered the definition, but I'd like to add that each one has a certain feel to it. The pacing of the story and the rhythm of the prose differs among those. You can blend and mix, etc which changes things, but if it carries the label certain expectations are attached.

High fantasy need not have elves and orcs (think Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel series, or the King Arthur stories), but there's often epic games of power, highly descriptive prose, and often much history or lore given to the reader.

Urban fantasy carries a grit to it, with faster-paced action and lore or history thrown in on a need-to-know basis, and as mentioned has a lot of variance.

Magic realism can blend with the others or be it's own thing.

The genre cubby hole matters for marketing. Once upon a time I simply wrote the story. I don't write to the market, but I did become cognizant of that feel/pacing I mentioned. If I want my story to be a high fantasy, even if blended, it needs to feel and read as one.

Do these differences even matter anymore? Why or why not?

John Linwood Grant: Do the labels matter? Yes, for publishers and authors wanting to tap into existing markets. Large chunks of the reading public are conservative in their buying, selecting genres and sub-genres where they anticipate a well-matched return for their bucks, either as comfort reads or as sharing elements with other books in the area which they like. And many of those chunks are loyal to a concept of 'fantasy' or crime' or 'western' - whatever. If they want wild magickal adventures and stirring battles, they don't necessarily want to read about an oppressed kid in Lagos who discovers he can feel the spirits of the trees as he confronts his abusive family. Thought they probably should, for the experience. ;)

Ian Totten: When writing though I tend to enjoy whatever the genre for the story is and will blend them at will. An example would be mixing magic into a real world story. Not enough to make it hokey, but enough to invoke a sense of curiosity and wonder.

Derrick Ferguson: Whenever I hear/read somebody complain about how they don't like labels and they don’t see why anything has to be labeled…tell you what we’re gonna do. We’re going to take all the labels off the canned foods in your local supermarket and let you guess what’s inside those cans the next time you go shopping.

Danielle Procter Piper: Pretty sure the only people really concerned about pigeonholing books into genres are publishers, marketers, and booksellers who seem unable to figure out how to tell people about them otherwise. I don't write for market. I write the stuff I'd like to read. Life isn't a genre, so I'm not going to tweak my stories to fit someone else's idea of what the lives of my characters should be called. It's not my fault if someone who stands to make money off what I do and probably never read any of it can't decide what color carrot to wave before the noses of his or her target audience... if they can even figure out who that target audience is. Many of the greatest things in life defy labels. We see the greatness, the genius, and wonder of things better when they're new, original, fresh, and unexpected. Some desk jockey in marketing can't figure out how to sell that... might explain why he lacks the imagination to be a writer.

John Linwood Grant: I do predict that people will announce high fantasy is dead, that grimdark has had its day, that urban fantasy is written-out and much more. And mainstream authors will write fantasy but insist that it's magical realism or liminal literature. After those shocking revelations, people will go on writing and reading whatever appeals to them.

[Link] After decades of dwarfs and elves, writers of color redefine fantasy

by Donna Bryson

For decades, the field of fantasy books was dominated by white men penning tales about dwarfs, elves, and other Norse-based mythology. Today, that’s changing as diverse writers are bringing fresh voices to the field, incorporating the myths and legends of cultures around the world. “People have been trying to do this for decades,” says author Tomi Adeyemi. “It’s just that enough people have broken down the doors over the decades that we’re where we are now.” Certainly, speculative fiction writers since at least Octavia Butler, the first science fiction writer to win a MacArthur Grant, have looked beyond Europe for inspiration. But no longer can they be dismissed as niche. From the $1 billion-plus box-office take of “Black Panther,” directed by Ryan Coogler, to the success of Ms. Adeyami's breakout debut, “Children of Blood and Bone,” audiences and readers are flocking to well-drawn worlds inspired by African and Asian countries. As one science fiction professor says, “We are not the field that thinks that what white men say is the only way to say things."


N.K. Jemisin, the first black writer to win the Hugo Award for best novel, packs a powerful idea into a few lines of dialogue in “The Fifth Season,” in which an otherworldly woman’s search for her daughter resonates with the emotions of African-Americans after the Civil War desperate to reunite families ravaged by slavery.

“There’s a hole, a gap,” Ms. Jemisin writes. “In history.”

History suffers when perspectives are left out, Jemisin points out. The same may be said of literature. After decades of dwarves, elves, and other Norse-based mythology, the world of fantasy is changing, incorporating the myths and legends of cultures around the world.

While the field was largely dominated by white men in decades past, today diverse writers are bringing new voices to the conversation, imagining futures based on more inclusive readings of the past, and creating multiethnic worlds that can help people understand their own. Certainly, speculative fiction writers since at least Octavia Butler – the first science-fiction writer to win a MacArthur grant – have looked beyond Europe for inspiration. But no longer can they be dismissed as niche. From the $1 billion-plus box office of “Black Panther,” directed by Ryan Coogler, to this spring’s breakout debut novel, “Children of Blood and Bone,” by Nigerian-American author Tomi Adeyemi, audiences and readers are flocking to well-drawn worlds inspired by African and Asian countries.

“People have been trying to do this for decades,” says Ms. Adeyemi, acknowledging those who laid the foundation. “It’s just that enough people have broken down the doors over the decades that we’re where we are now.”

Read the full article: https://www.csmonitor.com/Books/2018/0521/After-decades-of-dwarfs-and-elves-writers-of-color-redefine-fantasy

Preach it, Rev. Green! (aka, It Ain't Easy)

Note: A little something I felt the need to remind myself.

I started writing with a more lit focus, but with a love for genre fiction, and my earlier writing reflects that struggle between lit and genre in a way that made me, well, me... I want to embrace all kinds of work and style and create something new in pulps, horror, fantasy, sci-fi, superheroes, whatever.

As Kermit sang:

When green is all there is to be
It could make you wonder why
But why wonder why wonder
I am green, and it'll do fine
It's beautiful, and I think it's what I want to be 

So, I'm gonna be green because, well that's what I am.

[Link] Fantasy Publishers 2016 (No Agent Required!)

by Bryn Donovan

Last week I shared a list of agents accepting submissions of fantasy novels, but here are a bunch of publishers who accept unagented submissions. This list is mostly the same as my list of science fiction publishers, but there are some differences, and I figured it’s more convenient to have a list just for your genre.

Clicking on the name of the publisher will take you straight to the submission guidelines. These are mostly novel publishers, but I’ve included a couple of publishers of short fiction.

I’m not endorsing any of the publishers on this list, because I don’t know enough about most of them. The SFWA has a great overview of small presses and how to distinguish them from vanity publishers, and it’s worth checking out.

Read the full article: http://www.bryndonovan.com/2015/12/28/fantasy-publishers-2016-no-agent-required/

The Language Barrier -- Tolkien Did It, So It's Okay, Right?

There's a well established literary history of writers making up words and creating new ways of communicating verbally, from the poetry of e.e. cummings and the plays of Shakespeare to the fantasy and sci-fi of classic and contemporary authors. But why and how?

Why create a new language for your story? What's wrong with the existing ones?

H. David Blalock: Precedent. The most successful fantasy stories have all contained "new languages." Tolkien intended to show how a totally new language could be built into a world with its own identity. Before him, men like Lovecraft, Ashton Smith, even Howard had already looked for ways to get around calling their otherworldly heroes and villains something more exotic than "Dave" and "Steve."

Percival Constantine: I personally don't see it as being necessary. When I read Fellowship, I skipped over most of the parts in Elvish (and the songs, and the overly verbose passages—I was not a fan). As a writer, I know I'm going to have to provide a translation for those passages anyway, so I just don't see much of the point. I know there are those who feel it adds some additional flavor to the story, but I'm not one of them.

What are the pitfalls of creating a made-up language for the world of your story?

Percival Constantine: I've done a bit (emphasis on "a bit") of linguistic studying and I think I know enough to say this: if you don't know what you're doing, don't create a whole language. Tolkien was not only proficient in a number of languages but also a professor of linguistics and definitely knew his stuff. Dropping in the occasional word here and there for flavor is one thing, but creating an entire language is something completely different.

H. David Blalock: Invariably, fantastic names will run into pronunciation problems. The readability of the story is often crippled when the main character's name is hobbled with a lack or plethora of vowels, too many hyphens or apostrophes, or is just plain incomprehensible. Likewise for the language. The readers should be able to pronounce the words in their heads even if they get tongue-tied trying them out loud.

How do you go about the process of inventing new words and new ways of speaking? Do you build from existing language or start from scratch?

Jeremy Hicks: I find that it is much easier to adapt an existing language that is not heard commonly. Or seen in most forms of media. Anthropologists and linguists have been assembling extensive dictionaries and translations on most remote, dying, or dead languages, so you might as well put them to use for flavor. But do it systemically and judiciously. And like Perry said, preferably sparingly.

H. David Blalock: I try to use a language already in use as a basis. Not being a philologist, I don't have the expertise or the inclination to go through the agony Tolkien must have endured. My favorites to use are Norse, German, and Chinese. They can be twisted into some wonderfully bizarre, mind-bending names and terms.

Percival Constantine: I personally don't. I'll sometimes have a character who speaks in a manner that's strange (such as Liran in SoulQuest), but for the most part, I think you're better off focusing on the character development first.

NOTE: Here's a particularly helpful guide online to creating your own fictional language.

Building Fantasy Worlds in Fiction

For this week's writers roundtable, let's look at the idea of world building in fiction -- particularly in fantasy fiction this time. We'll explore world building in horror, pulp, and other genres in subsequent weeks, though, so don't worry. Your favorite genre is coming. But since world building is so important to the fantasy genre, let's start there.

How important is world building to a fantasy novel? What about fantasy short stories?

Jen Mulvihill: World building is not only important as a setting for your story but it also helps to shape and mold your character. A character becomes who and what they are by the world around them and their reactions to that world. If you put a character in an empty box that character is still going to react in someway to the empty box. Fantasy is all about world building because you are creating a place in most cases, that does not exist. You have to build the place in order to take the reader their and find out what and how the character(s) react, hence, creating a story.

Scott Sandridge: World building is very important, regardless of the genre. After all, if there's no overall world/setting for your characters to interact in, then there's not much story there because it'll all be happening in a static void.

Stephanie Osborn: Well, I'm just a tad bit out of genre here, in that I don't regularly write fantasy, but rather hard science fiction. A good bit of what has already been said is true across all genres, though. World building is important -- it is one of the things that lends reality to your story, possibly the biggest thing that lends reality to it. And it doesn't matter the story's length. But in a short story you do have to shorthand it a good bit. 

Logan Masterson: If your fantasy's set in a different world, it must be justified. The world must be an integral part of the story, or all the information it takes to set it up is really just wasted. Long or short form, the world and its features should almost be characters in their own right.

If the setting is more realistic, then it should either be set apart with telling details or interpreted with common threads. The best reason to use our own world in fantasy (call it urban if you like) is resonance.

Conversely, the best reason to build a strange new world is wonder, a sense of newness and possibility.

H. David Blalock: Good fantasy depends heavily on world building. The best architecture constructs a world of balance between opposing forces, with perhaps a referee influence in the middle to arbitrate or aggravate as the story requires. Stereotypes in fantasy literature are usually acceptable (sensitive to current real life issues) and archetypes make world-building skeletal structure more acceptable to the readers.

The traditional method in classic fantasy is the info-dump. Does that still work for modern readers or does it turn them away?

H. David Blalock: Modern readers don't seem to be as patient with the infodump as in the past. This is certainly a product of the visual media's current forays into the fantasy genre. On the other hand, much of what was previously needed to be included in an infodump is now very much more familiar due exactly to the visual media's influence.

K.S. Daniels: Infodumps suck. Period and no excuses. Sure you need to work the world building elements in early, say by the first three chapters, but make it relevant. Show it through a character interacting with this world (this also can be used to create tension!) Philip K Dick's Ubik does this perfectly.

Scott Sandridge: Infodump has always turned me away. Not even Tolkien bothered with infodump, just look at how richly detailed his world and history was when compared to how little of it is shown within the context of his stories minus the attached appendices (which was just added "fluff" for the fans).

Jen Mulvihill: I don't think readers like the info dump unless it is done in such a way that they don't feel like it's an info dump. For instance you would not start the story off info dumping the rather gradually introduce the information through clever conversation or scenes created around the character. 

Stephanie Osborn: Infodumps to me are not about world building, and to some extent are virtually impossible to eliminate in a hard SF story using extrapolations of cutting-edge theory. The majority of my readers are NOT going to be intimately familiar with M theory, and are NOT going to take the time to go look it up while still reading. I have to provide them at least an inkling of what it's about. That said, there are ways to introduce the material that somewhat disguises the infodump aspect. If the reference is a throwaway, an offhand comment, I don't even bother; the reader can pick up the necessaries in the context. Both in terms of world building and character establishment, there are certain shorthands that can be used to help establish the scene/character. There are those writers who say that some of these shorthands should never be used, but I disagree. For example, I do write dialect and accent into my characters where appropriate, though many writers consider that anathema. Why? That alone is a huge writer's shorthand to establishing the character. (E.g. you know right away that a guy with a Brooklyn accent did NOT grow up in California.) The same can be done -- within limits -- for an environment.

If you don't just info-dump, then how do you build a world for your readers?

Stephanie Osborn: The characters react to their environment, even if it is only subconsciously. These reactions are a shorthand to establishing it. Any reference to culture that creates, in the reader's mind, a similarity to an existing culture on Earth becomes a kind of shorthand to establishing the fictional culture. Look how readily Tolkien evokes Atlantis, or Norse/Viking culture, or Celtica, for example. No sooner do you as a reader draw the correlation between the Rohirrim and Viking/Norse culture, than you realize the Rohirrim will not be fighters to trifle with. Likewise in my Displaced Detective Series (okay -- shameless plug), if one of the characters refers to another as a "bloke," you know right away that said character is from a country with strong ties to Great Britain, even if not directly FROM the UK. If he says, "Good day to you," instead of "G'day," you've just eliminated Australia; et cetera ad infinitum ad nauseam. Now, that might seem like character building rather than world building, but it depends on the circumstances, because if this character is typical of his environment/culture, then you've just said a slew of things about that environment/culture. It all kind of blends into the whole.

H. David Blalock: Barring an infodump, usually allowing the main character to build his/her own backstory over the course of the first couple of chapters gives the reader enough information to become involved. Then, as needed, further information can be inserted as the character discovers it themselves.

Scott Sandridge: You build it one scene at a time, through dialogue, character interaction, (brief) descriptions of scenery, etc.

Jen Mulvihill: Slowly introduce your information, that way the reader feels like they have discovered something. Example: in The Lost Daughter of Easa, you don't find out all the information at one time about the Spider Witch but rather, learn a little bit about her throughout the book until near the end you finally get her full history and understand why she is doing what she is doing.

What are the pitfalls to avoid for beginning writers when laying out their new worlds for today's readers?

Scott Sandridge: Don't write a big 10-page long history lesson at the start of the story before you get to the actual start of the actual story.

Jen Mulvihill: Write what you know, read a lot, and finish the book. So many people tell me they are writing a novel but some have either never put pen to paper or they have been writing it for centuries. If you are going to do it, then do it, don't talk about it forever because that does not get the book written. Finish the book then ask now what? Don't put the carriage before the horse.

H. David Blalock: Problems to avoid for newer writers: unpronounceable names, unbelievable character interactions, lack of continuity in backstory versus plot... pretty much anything any writer of any genre might want to avoid.