Posts Tagged ‘fantasy’

Sports in Fantasy Worlds

Posted: August 4, 2012 in fantasy, writing
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This is  repost of article I wrote a couple of years back but I thought was worth brining back again due to the Olympics being on.

The grand final of Australian Rules Football (better known as aussie rules or footy down here in Australia) is on this weekend and it got me thinking about sport in fantasy worlds and stories. Man has played sports as long as they have been around – the Greeks and Romans had their Games and the origins of a number of modern sports such as soccer, rugby and cricket are centuries old. I was delighted to see in Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World the sailors playing a version of cricket when they were on the Galapogas islands.

Many fantasy worlds and authors seem to glaze over sports – I guess that when you are busy saving the world there is little time to kick a ball around. Gladiator style games seem the most prominent, though other types of sports do crop up. Raymond E. Fiest has a soccer style game develop though a number of books, which is a nice touch, while other authors make up their own bizarre and often highly dangerous types of games.

In an effort to make a believable world I realised I had to include some form of sports to it. Of course, being Australian, this will be flavoured by what we play here, notably cricket and aussie rules (though most likely not exactly as they are currently played). Other sports will have to be played in different nations, so there is amble opportunity for other styles of sports and games to make appearances.

Speaking of aussie rules – I highly recommend people check it out of they can. It is a truly spectacular sport which is happily slowly gaining followings in other countries. Initially this was spread by the Aussie Diaspora but it is being taken up in numerous nations and now has proper amateur leagues in such places as New Zealand, USA, Canada, the UK, Denmark, South Africa, Samoa, PNG, Nauru, Ireland, Germany and others. It’d be great to see it become a major world sport – a dream I have if I ever became a successful author would be to actively support such moves.

Of Knights and Winged Hussars

Posted: May 28, 2012 in General, The Oncoming Storm, writing
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In between working to finish off a couple of short story collections, I’ve been doing some world building for an epic fantasy series that I’ve talked of before – The Oncoming Storm. Back some time ago I made a solid start to the first novel (almost 60K words) but it has been sitting idle for a while, something I want to rectify.

In contrast to my other stories, it is a more traditional fantasy, set to have knights and castles and princesses and all that. Yet, as ever, other ideas and inspirations have come in that threaten to change things up again. One thing especially among that are the Polish Winged Hussars, one of the most dominant, and striking cavalry forces of their time.

For a view of what they looked like I found this youtube clip.

So, I’ve been wanting to add something similar to the setting, but somehow retain the knights and also another group, the Warrior Brotherhoods, plus various other groups, which has led to a varied mix, and also decentralised, make up of the setting. I think I may have figured it out as well.

The setting comprises a number of states that form a unified League – while semi-autonomous, they are under a High King. Each state has their own nobles, with their personal collection of retainers. Normally this is where the Knights would figure, but instead I’ve made them more like the old Military Orders, such as the Knights Hospitaller, the Knights Templar, or the Teutonic Knights – independent entities that owe allegiance to no state or noble, but operate across all of them. The Warrior Brotherhoods operate in the same manner, but are a precursor to the Knight Orders, and aren’t made up of noble born like the Knights. The largest of the states, Liantria, home to the High King, is the one that uses the Winged Lancers. The nobles and their retainers form the various units of the Winged Lancers, and when combined they are a formidable cavalry force.

And one of these days I’ll get it all written up and a story finished…

Writing Update

Posted: May 2, 2012 in fantasy, The Commonwealth Chronicles, writing, writing update
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Just a quick update on things.

I’ve finished the rewrite of The Rose of Nakunwe, the followup to Dawn of Wolves and next short story in the Frontier Wolves collection. I want to finish off the one after that, an as yet unnamed short story that has been plotted but not yet started, before releasing them both.

And then it is two more short stories, another novella, and the collection is done. Hopefully before the end of the year as well…

Writing Update

Posted: February 14, 2012 in fantasy, The Commonwealth Chronicles, writing, writing update
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The first rough draft of the next story has now been completed. The Rose of Nakunwe is a planned novelette which is next in The Commonwealth Chronicles series, forming part of The Frontier Wolves sub-series.

The rewrite should be done by the end of the month.

However I’m still debating what exactly to do with it. It may be a little short to release as a stand alone story. I may end up waiting until the following novelette is done and releasing them together – or maybe wait until the entire Frontier Wolves story is told and releasing them all together as one volume.

That decision can wait for now, at least until the rewrite is done.

Dawn of Wolves Completed

Posted: January 28, 2012 in Dawn of Wolves, fantasy, writing
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The Dawn of Wolves novella has finally been finished and uploaded via KDP to Amazon where it is currently being crunched and should make an appearance in a day or two.

 

 

Dawn of Wolves comes in at 49,000 words, a little longer than a normal novella, but one I am calling a novella anyway as it is only half a novel.  While previously I have been jumping around a bit with the stories, Dawn of Wolves starts a sub-series of stories within The Commonwealth Chronicles that will follow the Frontier War against the Nacatori – The Tomb of the Tagosa Kings takes place in the Frontier War and forms part of this series, which I am entitling Frontier Wolves.

The plans for the series are the opening novella, Dawn of Wolves, followed by five novelettes (the last of which is The Tomb of the Tagosa Kings) and then a final novella to round out the collection.  Once done I’ll be collecting it in an anthology, but that is some time off yet.

The next novelette, The Rose of Nakunwe, has already been plotted out in rough form in a notepad.  next step is to write up the first rough draft.

Dawn of Wolves Rewrite Complete

Posted: January 16, 2012 in Dawn of Wolves, fantasy, writing, writing update
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I have finished the rewrite of Dawn of Wolves, ending at around 49,000 words, which is slightly over what is normally classified as a novella, but close enough I’ll still call it one.

Now comes the next step – formatting, editing, proof reading and of course cover design.  Hopefully that will not take too long.

For the release I’m going to do something a little different this time around – I’m going to enrol it in the Amazon Kindle Select programme.

Kindle Select is a programme where by it is enrolled in a lending library and Amazon fork up a bunch of money (currently at 500,000 a month).  Those enrolled get a percentage of funds equal to the percentage of loans they make.  In addition you get 5 days per free months where you can offer your book for free.

There is a but through – there is always a but.  Firstly a lot of people are signing up – and it is the big names that will get the most lends.  Secondly, you can’t sell the book anywhere else.  Not even on your own website.  It is for that reason I’m leaving my old books out of it, as they are elsewhere.  This one is going to test it out, to see if it makes much of a difference.

The Year Ahead

Posted: January 7, 2012 in Dawn of Wolves, writing, writing update
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With another year just started, it seems appropriate to look forward and try and set some goals.

Basically it comes down to write more, publish more and promote more.  And post more to the blog.

On the writing/publishing more, it is off to a good start.  I am up to the final rewrite/edit of Dawn of Wolves, though it seems to have blow out a little in size.  The aim was for a 40,000 novella.  It is looking to be around 50-55K when done.  At the current rate I’m writing it should be finished well before the end of the month.

Once it is done, I hope to add it to the new Kindle Lending Library programme, to hopefully help promotion wise.

When it is done, it will be time to press on with new projects.  The main two are to finish the last stories for Nhaqosa to complete his story arc and then bundle the new ones and the old ones in a single compilation, and to write the rest of the Frontier Wolves collection, of which Dawn of Wolves is the first part, and Tomb of the Tagosa Kings comes towards the end.

After that?  Well, we’ll see.

 

Winter Wolves Redone

Posted: December 8, 2011 in winter wolves, writing, writing update
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I have finally finished the re-edit of Winter Wolves.  In addition it has received a new cover as well, in keeping with the others of the series.

In addition to trying to fix up all spelling and grammatical errors that I could find, I also re-wrote the last 10,000 words.  I had never been entirely happy with the ending, given I felt it had too much in common with the ending of Tears of the Mountain.  And there was a good reason for that.  I had started work on Winter Wolves first, plotting it out and writing about half of it.  Then, as is my way, I switched projects and starts on Tears.  This time I actually stuck through to the end and finished Tears.  However I had never had an ending for Tears planned and in the end borrowed the one I had planned for Winter Wolves.  When I went back to Winter Wolves I found myself without an ending and tried to cobble one together, one that I felt had too much in common with the ending of Tears.  The re-edit gave me a chance to re-write the ending into one not so similar, and one that I fell makes more sense – at least for me.

The new versions are kicking around at Smashwords and Amazon.

Plans For The Rest Of The Year

Posted: November 23, 2011 in Dawn of Wolves, General, winter wolves, writing, writing update
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End of the year is rapidly approaching and I still have a few things on the list that I want to see done by then, so I’d better knuckle down and get them done.

First up is to finish the re-edit/re-write of Winter Wolves. I’m down to the last 2K to go, so hopefully won’t be long. After that I need to work on a new cover for it, like the others of that series.

Secondly is to finish off Dawn of Wolves – it has been sitting there for a long while now. At 40K down, there is about 10K to go for it.

Lastly is to do another short anthology of short stories – somewhere between 3 and 5 of them. I’ve got a couple of collection in the works – just need to work out which to finish first.

Tears of the Mountain Redone

Posted: October 14, 2011 in fantasy, Tears of the Mountain, writing, writing update
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The re-edit of Tears of the Mountain is now done, fixing up various little grammatical and spelling errors that hadn’t been caught previously. It also now has its new cover. The edited version is now up and working on Smashwords and is currently being published on Amazon, so should be ready to go in a day or two.

Now to start on Winter Wolves.

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