What the universe gives you, part 2

I've been to Shangri-la and I need to go back.

Sometimes people ask writers/artists "where do you get your ideas?" In my opinion, if you can't see the constant blizzard of ideas around you then you aren't cut out for art. But some places are more conducive to ideas than others, to be honest. It would be easy to say that Bhutan is an interesting place because it's beautiful. It's more complicated than that, though.

I had no explanation at first as to why I got choked up in the airplane and shed tears as we flew out of Paro. The beds were miserably hard, I went to every meal ravenously hungry, and it was easily the most physically draining vacation of my life. I should've been eager to leave.

But...

Well, for the moment I will just post some photos for their visual inspirational value. Why this trip was important to me has a lot of factors, of course, several of which are more personal that I want to get into on this blog. I'll try to talk a little about the people and the culture in a later post.

Lots of clouds? Yes. The average day in Bhutan is "partly cloudy with scattered afternoon showers and rainbows." Yes, rainbows are pretty much a daily sight in Bhutan; it makes the place even more magical.

What the universe gives you, part 1

I like to say that the universe will give you what you need for your art. By which I mean, look at what the universe has brought you and say: this is what I need for my art. The challenge is to figure out how it fits in.

I went on my trip to Bhutan and Nepal looking for these things. Needless to say, ideas and inspiration came in a blizzard.

Bhutan is so beautiful that it defies reality simply by existing. More on that later.

Kathmandu, Nepal, isn't the idyllic little town it used to be, though. Nepal suffered a long civil war in the 90s/00s, and thousands of refugees piled into the city. It feels a lot like an Indian city now: over-crowded, smelling of rotten trash, beggars on every corner.

I saw some things that I thought might be of interest to my fellow writers, though. Let me be the universe that's giving you what you need, for a moment. Take a look at the cremation platforms on the banks of the Bagmati River.

Hindus cremate their dead, usually within a few hours of death. They believe that this frees the soul to re-enter the reincarnation cycle, so it's important to them.

The body's wrapped in a shroud, carried around the pyre three times clockwise by the bearers, and laid down. River water is poured in the mouth. I'm sure that various prayers are said -- I was across the river, so I couldn't hear.

Our tour guide said that no death certificate is issued, but they do keep track. Suspicious deaths get a full investigation before the body is cremated.

The smell? Mostly charcoal, because it takes a lot of wood to burn a body. There's a slight hint of meat, but it's far less than at your average barbecue.

Only those of the untouchable caste can oversee cremations. Castes are built into the Hindu world-view and touch every aspect of life -- the platforms in these photos were for ordinary people. There were platforms for higher caste folks just upriver.

When the pyre has burned down, the platform is cleared straight into the river. 

Our tour guide said that when he was a boy, this river was crystal clear. It's only since the population explosion that it's become filthy. Dumping cremated remains didn't have much impact on the water quality.

On a different note, I also saw bowls made from teak leaves for sale in a local market. They're held together by little bamboo pins, so they are 100% biodegradable and renewable.

Pretty clever, I think.

Seen anything unusual lately?

Writing exercise #2: character via setting

Continuing my writing exercises, this one goes to the other main character in my sci-fi WIP. 

This exercise comes from Fiction Writer’s Workshop (ISBN 1884910394) by Josip Novakovich. Chapter 2: Setting. #12: One page. Make a character visible through her surroundings. (he lists some examples of how) Objective: to learn the power of setting as a means for character portraits. Bits of environment are your tubes of paint. 

Lena dropped into her VR recliner with a sigh. A few crumbs from the morning’s coffee cake lingered on the arm. She flicked them off one by one. Then she picked up her jack and plugged it into the socket under her left ear. Virtual reality slid down over what her meat eyes saw.

Green and amber status lights on her rig winked. Custom-built, of course. A steel rack of quantum processors, another of wireless hubs for various frequencies, the third rack for her secret-ingredient hardware, and a private bubble fusion plant so the draw on the station’s power grid wouldn’t give her away. Everything was cabled to reduce snooping and the extra wire color-tagged, neatly looped, and zip-tied.

The rest of her apartment’s front room was a tangle of dirty laundry waiting for the multi-washer and boxes from the grocery delivery service that she hadn’t broken down for the recycling chute yet. She had two tall stools that stood before the kitchenette counter — or at least two mountain peaks in the field of clutter.

Front door had a clear swath in front of it, though, and a second, vertical deadbolt that Lena had added well above the standard one. Wouldn’t stop anyone determined to get in, but it’d give her time to get out the fire door.

Cutting the story flab

I've talked about major reconstruction of story lines before (here) but this one's a little different. I was revising a short story recently and had the feeling that it was longer than it really needed to be. It was clocking in at just over 9k -- which is a hard sell in the market, too -- and writing it had been kinda fraught with insecurities for various reasons.

Being a world-builder, I'm always itching to do it. My gut kept insisting that the gender politics needed more explaining... but this is just a short story. You don't have to explain everything. (You don't have to explain everything in a novel, either, but that's a different post.)

It's been a while since I've used my revision avatar.

Anyhow, I singled out one scene that could definitely be cut. Why? Because it's mostly me caving in to the world-building itch. My MC is being shown around and explained to, rather than doing/realizing/progressing. Onto the chopping block the scene went.

But: that's not to say there was no useful information at all. I didn't want to make a hole or leave readers confused.

What to keep
Before cutting the scene, I looked through it for:

• new characters met
• first descriptions of people or places -- a subset of world-building, true
• character arc moments -- questions raised, answered, realizations made
• plot developments -- usually the scene's being cut for a lack of these, but check for them anyway
• essential world-building -- see below

In my case, there were some detailed first descriptions and some minor character moments that needed to be salvaged. Then I tossed hundreds of words of tension-less world-building (read: infodumping.)

None of it was essential? Correct, because this is a short story. I was only introducing things that would be seen later, in my case. Were this a novel, that could be given a little leeway. This is a short story that's already on the too-big side, though. The reader can meet these details as they happen during a plot-relevant moment. Anything that doesn't happen during a plot-relevant moment isn't strictly necessary.

What to do with them
So I had a handful of scraps that I needed to work into someplace else. I went looking for:

• relevant conversations, or ones that can be steered toward the topic
• descriptions at more relevant moments that could be expanded a bit
• if there'd been new characters to meet, a better place or possibly drop the character entirely

Overall, I cut 1500 words and worked about 300 back in. Net savings: 1200 words. It's still big for a short story, but we'll see if there's any use for it.

Indie Life: Keep writing

Welcome to Indie Life -- the second Wednesday of the month! Time to talk about the realities of self-publishing in the middle of the ongoing sea change that ebooks have wrought.

Moving on 
I don't know about you, but I had Disciple kicking around in my head for years and years before I had it fully figured out and my writing chops were on the level that it needed. I've only self-published the first three parts, so far, but all six have been written. For me, the story is finished.

And to be honest, we were all happy to be done -- the characters and I. But now they're taking a well-deserved break and I'm at loose ends.

Starting over from scratch 
When you had years to nibble at the world-building and character development, it didn't feel so big. You can eat an elephant, after all, if you do it one bite at a time. You had time to learn your characters' life histories, explore all the nooks and crannies of the world, and even develop all the second-tier characters.

But now you've got a few books on Amazon and you know how important backlist is when you're a self-publisher. You don't have five or ten years to write the next one.

That elephant starts looking kinda big.

Recycling
Have you ever groused about how an author's characters are all essentially the same? Ever got tired of every story involving New Orleans somehow? How some writers keep going back to the same characters in the same universe and never let them have a "happily ever after"? (How many times can the same person save the universe, anyway?)

You can do that, of course. And if you love telling a certain kind of story -- traditional romances, for example -- there's no reason you shouldn't and there's even a gigantic market for it.

Personally, I think it's interesting to see patterns in your own writing. Lately, I've been reacquainting myself with one of my science fiction characters and realizing how much he has in common with one of Disciple's characters. They're the same MBTI type, if you've read my posts on that, but they are quite different in their execution.

But I don't want to tell the same thing over and over, with the same or only slightly different characters. I want to challenge myself. I have a writing bucket list. Do you?

Write everything down
You should already be doing this, actually. I use Scrivener (it rocks, buy it) and I have a file called the Brainstorm Zone where I write down all the scraps of ideas that seem substantial enough to work with -- a paragraph or two, at least. When I'm starting from scratch, I go over all those notes and see if anything might fit. Or, might fit after a little mashing up and re-tooling. You never know.

Never throw stuff away
I have dozens of trunked novels and novellas. Many of them have been lost to obsolete file formats and exist only as a tractor-feed, fanfold printout (I kid you not.) They are never going to be seen by anybody in their current state because they're clumsy, poorly written, and sloppy... but there are little interesting bits in there.

Don't throw your crummy old stuff away. Nobody will know you took a half-baked idea, finished baking it and added a few new gadgets.

Don't cut corners
I've built worlds from scratch, and I'll do it again. Just because I need to keep producing, as a self-publisher, does not mean that I should lower my standards or let things slide as "good enough." I am the only person holding me responsible for the quality of my work.

My readers deserve the best I can do. They're hard-won and priceless.

Have you started eating a new elephant recently?

At the intersection of Voice and World-building: names

Names are wonderful, powerful things. Handle with care.

Baby name books are a must for any writer -- or at least they were before the internet came along. Personally, I find a book quicker than slogging through baby name sites hell-bent on clogging the page with banner ads. I have one that's organized by ethnicity and lists language origins and meanings for everything. That was great when I wanted German names that were pure German, not rooted in Latinate languages or the Bible/Hebrew.

Sometimes, you want to be that particular about the names in your story. Sometimes you don't want a name that sounds modern, familiar, or is easily traced to a particular ethnicity. Maybe you want something with a particular "sound" to it. Something smooth, something harsh, something with r'a'ndom punc'tu'ation. (Makes my eyes roll every time. Establish that it's a glottal stop, or that contracted names are culturally acceptable, or don't do it.)

It has long been noted that it's a good idea for names (human, geographical, etc,) in a story to be consistent -- as in, follow set patterns for each ethnic group represented. Names are, of course, a result of a group's language and traditions, and convey certain ideas to the reader even if it's on a subtle, subconscious level. Consider: John, Jean, Johannes, Ivan and Ian. All the same guy? Slightly different?

The master at this is, of course, Tolkein, but most of us don't have the chops to generate entire languages to back up our nomenclature. Still, since an author should do nothing accidentally there are easier ways to build this into your world.

Short of building whole languages, here are three ways to synch up your names: use an existing pattern (language) to generate names, use your own pattern, or play it by ear.

I've collected a fair number of links to fantasy name generators, over the years. Here's my list. If you know of more generators (not just name lists), post them in the comments!

Random or pattern-based:
Yafnag  •  Totro  •  Rinkworks

Ethnicity-based:
Lowchen  •  Behind the Name

Multiple generator sites:
Springhole.net  •  Donjon  •  GameDecor  •  Serendipity  •  Seventh Sanctum

Using existing languages
Existing languages do provide a fairly consistent "sound" for names. Google's translator covers an impressive number of languages, and you can use those words straight up as names or mash and mangle them as you please.

If you want something that's not on Google's list, there are online reference dictionaries out there. They aren't as easy to use as Translator, but they're better than nothing. For example, I used this Anglo-Saxon dictionary while I was writing Hawks & Rams.

Pronounceability
Say the names aloud. Yell them like a mom who's just found her favorite vase broken (that will require a full name, the universal sign that you're in big trouble.) Cut them down to the shortest possible nickname. Or the rudest possible.

Unpronounceable names have their place. But if you're going to saddle a major character with one, recognize that there has to be something short, sweet and pronounceable that other characters can yell across a crowded room to get their attention.

That's my ultimate test for a name. In the real world, anything three syllables or more will get cut down to one or two. Heck, two-syllable names often get cut to one. If anybody knows of someone who acquired a nickname longer than their actual name, I'd love to hear about it.

Do you play it by ear?
Where does naming consistency fall on your priority list? For me, it's tied into voice and world-building -- and you know how I am about world-building. :) I've been doing some of that recently, so this has been on my mind.

Index of blog tour posts, April 2013

During my last few blog tours, I've written guest posts about aspects of Disciple's world, a few character interviews, a bunch of interviews... some of the interviews were fairly good, I thought (like Kiefan's interview over at COP,) but I've always figured that the world-building posts were primarily for writers. If that.

In all the recent talk about blogging as a writer, I expected someone to mention the "ghetto" aspect. We're a niche, with our specialized interests and jargon. Readers don't have the same interests as writers, so why would they come in here looking for books? But writers are readers, people answer -- which is true. Maybe most writers recommend stuff they like to non-writer-friends, and it's just me that's too asocial for that.

But anyway. Here's an index of world-building and other writerly posts from my April, 2013 blog tour.  I will update it as I go.

Hair Symbolism
MBTI and character development (this is an intro-level post for that MBTI series I've been meaning to do.)
Pop culture vs. historical medieval culture
Inheritance in Wodenberg (similar to what's in the appendix of Disciple, Part II)
Pre-industrial first aid kid
Lamia
Magic for the saints of war
3 tips for realistic dialogue
Butt In Chair
Deliberate structure choices

Subtle Things #6: How to feed the readers?

My (bad) habit of reading reviews for Disciple, Part I has dropped off considerably, but I still glance at them now and then. Those that have complaints tend to say things like "never explained anything" and, as a result, "couldn't get into it."

Okay. Valid point. That's the flip side of the "I don't spoon-feed my readers" coin -- some readers are starving for explanations.

And maybe I'm not so sensitive to that because I rarely feel starved for explanations, myself, when reading a book. I can appreciate details that don't need further exposition, and I'll wait for infrequent spoon-feedings of information. Mélusine, by Sarah Monette, was a bit of a smack up side the head, in that way. And that's probably a good thing. (Paperback available on Amazon.)

No spoons, here. Monette kept me hungry.

I read the prologue and it's a bit like getting thrown against a wall. The world-building is a mass of details and assumptions encoded in a dense (but engaging, thank goodness) voice.* The author throws down her gauntlet and that's your fair warning. A couple dozen pages in, when the few scraps of explanation raised more questions than they answered, the challenge was even clearer. Figure it out for yourself.

The fine line that Monette walked, though, is that I never doubted that what I needed was in there. Enough was intuitively obvious, coupled with minor scraps of definition, that I could build an understanding of her world even with what she didn't give me. And given that I could figure out most things, what became really glaring were the places she didn't give me enough to go on. I had to choose to not be annoyed about those.

How in the heck do you present an avalanche of world-building with enough structure to reassure people that they can run with it? It's one of those Subtle Things, and I've teased out this much: some of it is repetition in different contexts so you can see the pattern, some of it is careful coding using words you have to trust the reader to know, and some of it relies on intuition -- which can fall on its face.

Repetition with context: "flat"
The first time we see this word, it's: Kethe, spare me from flats. Second: She was a flat, sure, and she was spoiled, for damn sure... Third: [referring to dangerous neighborhoods] ...but they ain't places that I'd take a flat. Those are fairly context-free, but even so it's clearly an insult in the first line. Second time, it's put on par with being spoiled. Third time, you get a sense of social context. I caught on that it was the term for those who were not living on the mean streets.

Coded with trust: "septad"
Something they don't quite teach you in school: it behooves you to know the Latin (and Greek) prefixes for various numbers and quantities. You'll pick up a bunch by way of geometry (pentagon, hexagon) and computer literacy (gigabyte, nanosecond), but you really should learn the whole list of them. Monette's trusting that we all know septa- indicates seven. In Mélusine, "septad" is a multi-purpose word indicating a group of seven. Days, feet, coins, it doesn't seem to matter. It's never explicitly defined, and it doesn't need to be.

Intuition: colloquial phrases, "thief-keeper"
My personal favorite was: If she was any flatter, they'd be paving the street with her. Also, nutty as a box of squirrels. This was part of what made the voice so engaging -- colorful, yet intuitively graspable catchphrases. Mildmay supplies the vast majority of them.

"Thief-keeper" is another word that was used without explanation. It did eventually get some context, but it was obvious enough that it only needed minor modification: child thieves, in specific, like Fagin.

Too much to handle?
You do this all the time, actually, in everyday life: pick up details because of context and tone. If you know how people speak, and you can hear your characters clearly, these details will fall into place on their own. Mostly. It's something to tweak in revision. Good to be aware of, and good to keep an eye on, but being too deliberate or, God forbid, bending the dialogue to fit it, will only look clunky.

So, as requested, those are some of the thoughts that Mélusine stirred up. I gave it four stars over at Goodreads. I'm stingy with my stars, so that's an excellent rating for me. Wasn't five because the plot did get a little bogged down and hazy around the 2/3rds mark. But it's full of wonderful imagery, dripping with voice, and the world-building is excellent. Minor caution: it does include some sexual nastiness.

*In my brief Goodreads review, I mentioned how this book reminded me of A Clockwork Orange -- that's both because of how you're tossed into the lake (so far as the voice goes) and how the first-person narrator manages to be engaging in spite of that. Mélusine's voice is, in fact, more engaging and easier to read than Orange. Not least because even Mildmay is far more likeable than Alex...

Unicorn Bell: constructing gender

I'm hosting at UB this week, and gender constructs have been on my mind lately. These are off-the-cuff, kinda rough draft blog posts, so I'm conflicted about whether they'll be interesting enough to keep around... but who knows. Maybe I can beat them into better shape later.

Index for future reference:
Defining the negative space
A different way to define negative space
Individual variation
(Thu.)
(Fri.)

Worldbuilding blogfest

This week I'm wrapping up my blog tour with the World Building Blogfest, which is hosted by my fellow Unicorn Bell contributor Sharon Bayliss. I'm all about the world-building, so naturally I hopped on the bandwagon to talk about Wodenberg, the little kingdom at the center of Disciple.

Index for future reference:
Geography
History
Religion
Food & drink
Excerpt

In other news, the Kickstarter project has reached 100%, so all systems are go! If you want to pre-order Disciple, Part II, you only have until the 31st.

Maturity, perceived age, and development

Perceived age of characters is a tricky thing. Since I'm currently 41, it's been a long time since I was a teenager. My teenage years aren't exactly memories that I cherish, either. My main character Kate starts Disciple at sixteen years old. The story will finish before she turns eighteen -- or not long after, at worst. I do not consider Disciple a YA story, though I don't doubt that teenagers might find it interesting.

Kate has been confronting me with questions like what is "maturity" and how is maturity demonstrated and what is "appropriate" for a given age and level of experience -- partly because she starts out "more mature" due to the cultural expectations put on her, and partly because she goes through so much in the course of the story.

In the course of preparing Part I to publish and revising Part II, I got some whiplash from meeting the (slightly) younger, (much) less experienced version of Kate.

I saw some vintage photos, recently, of child laborers from the turn of the 19th/20th century, and wondered what they were like as people. Were they angry that they had to work, or did they simply accept it as "normal," maybe something they felt obligated to do to help support their parents and siblings. Did they "act out" in reaction to it? Some of them had cigarettes in their mouths; it's entirely possible they were drinking, too. What did "adults" think of that -- did they pull up a stool at the bar and commiserate, or did they shake their heads and dismiss it as childishness?

It's possible some of them were sober, hard-working, kids who never questioned that this was what they wanted. Maybe they welcomed the responsibility of a job and felt it was a validation of their worth.

People come in all flavors, after all, at every age.

Getting back to Disciple, I'm more worried about Kate sounding like a 40-year-old than about her sounding like a 16-year-old. It's my opinion that the maturity level we perceive as "appropriate" for a given age is highly dependent on culture and affluence. But, as has been reported in a variety of (fascinating) places, the teenaged brain is noticeably different from the adult brain, and that needs to be taken into account.

How those difference manifest is heavily shaped by culture and affluence -- which is why I brought up the child labor photos. Compare those kids' lives to a well-off high school grad who's working a part-time summer job because s/he wants to, not needs to. People talk about how kids are in such a hurry to grow up (usually with a shake of their heads). I doubt anyone said that of the child laborers.

This post is already turning into a ramble. In short, I feel comfortable with Kate "sounding" older than 16 because in her culture, she's expected to be married, a mother, and running a household at that age. Due to the story, she's actually responsible for much more than that. And yet, I can't have her acting with all the mature perspective (lol) of a 40-year-old.

What does your character's culture expect of children and teenagers?

See also: Demonstrating maturity

Sparkly things

GIVEN that I am trying to avoid checking my Kickstarter project every five minutes, let's try to distract me with sparkly things.

The little kingdom in my fantasy novel has a climate and geography loosely based on New England (see this post). That's because I'm from New England originally and I make no apologies for loving it.

One of many things that New England is not known for, though, is its supply of gemstones. And any kingdom needs a stash of jewels, let's be honest. I knew my fantasy kingdom was not going to be rich, powerful, or luxurious but they do need some sparkly things to pull out for important occasions.

I am not a geologist. But I did do some homework and here's what I turned up:

Rocks in general
What's under the dirt? In New England, it's essentially all granite under the thin layer of dirt that the glaciers left behind. Therefore, I went looking for gemstones that are often found in association with granite. To use a more technical term, granite is the matrix in which the gemstones will be found.

Quartz. Yawn?

Everyone's seen big, clear quartz crystals and yes, they're nice. Rose quartz is pretty and smoky quartz has a certain mysterious air. Quartz is a very common mineral, though, so it's not very exciting. Right?

Don't forget that amethyst is just purple quartz. Purple being a royal color (due to the difficulty of creating the color with natural dyestuffs), a nicely colored amethyst is a natural match for royalty. It was a valuable gemstone before they discovered tons of it in Brazil.

Tourmaline
This is not a gemstone you hear a lot about, but it comes in a variety of nice colors including green, yellow, blue, pink, and sometimes two colors at once. Which, you must admit, is kinda funky looking.

Topaz
Classic topaz is yellow, but it can also be found in blue, orange, or pink. I'm fond of blue gems, and while this might not be sapphire it's still a nice shade.

Pure topaz is colorless and clear. While that may sound as boring as clear quartz crystals, consider: like glass, it's hard and transparent, but this gemstone is tougher than glass. Topaz is on the high end of the Mohs hardness scale, so if you could find a nice, big crystal... what sorts of useful things could you carve it into? (assuming you have the tools to carve it!) For an idea of the comparison, glass ranks about 6-7 on the Mohs scale, whereas topaz is an 8. That's on par with steel.

Beryl
Like quartz, beryl comes in many colorful varieties. Some of them are quite pretty.

Red	Gold	Pink, aka Morganite

Oh, and don't forget beryl's most popular color...

Green, aka Emerald

Now that's a sparkly thing worth mentioning.

I'm running a Kickstarter project to fund the professional editing, proofreading, and cover artwork for my gritty fantasy romance, Disciple, Part I: For Want of a Piglet. There will be six parts in total, published over the course of the next few years.

I'm offering e-books, paperbacks, promotional bookmarks, and more at various pledge levels (ranging from $1 - $100). Check out the project page for my book trailer, budget, and production schedule.

Kickstarter.com is a fundraising platform for all sorts of creative projects. Artists post a profile of their project and offer rewards in exchange for pledged money. The pledges are not collected unless the artist's funding goal is reached within a set period of time. If the goal is reached, the artist receives the money, carries out the project and distributes the rewards promised. It's a fascinating site and easy to lose time in!

X: Signature for the illiterate

Legally, a simple X can still be the signature of a person that cannot write their name. It needs to be witnessed, since such a thing is so easy to forge, but it's still legit. Some places substitute an inked fingerprint, which is quite reasonable too.

Illiteracy is the default state in my fantasy story -- not surprising, I'm sure. Peasants have more important and time-consuming survival skills to teach their children than reading and writing. Most of them would sign with an X if they needed to sign something.

Unexpectedly, this also came up in my science fiction when a truce needed to be signed. The universe I built -- the Jovian Frontier -- is so hooked up, wireless and otherwise computer-driven that I suddenly realized that it had been 150,000 words and nobody had even typed anything, never mind held a pen and written something on a piece of paper.

(a piece of what? the stuff you blow your nose on?)

So I was wrapping up the end of the second book and suddenly I looked over at Maggie and asked, Can you sign your name? 

She said she'd practice for it, since this treaty was important. But it made me think about hand-writing and how it's slowly but steadily fading from the world. Would it ever become so unusual that one would need to practice one's signature for a special event?

What would that special event be?

If computers become good enough to take dictation and read text to us, will reading fall by the wayside too?

Perish the thought...

M: Money

In fantasy
You can create your monetary system from scratch, which has its ups and downs. Do you go the easy gold-silver-copper route, or put in the work to build something as complicated as the old British system? Go with exotic coins made of electrum or mithril?

Either way, consider:

• What does the coin represent? For a long time, the American dollar represented a certain amount of gold. In theory, you could go to the bank and get your gold whenever you wanted. Maybe a silver coin is equal to a bushel of wheat, in your fantasy kingdom. Or maybe money is a scrap of paper that's worth something because everybody believes it's worth something.
• Who claims the authority to make currency? In some times and places, it was issued by banks to represent deposited wealth - not governments. Do people melt down their jewelry to make new coins? Do they melt coins to make jewelry? Is there quality control? 
• On the heels of that, do people trust the money to be worth something? This is part of why precious metals are a no-brainer for coins. They'll always be worth something, right? (or will they?)

In science fiction
Up to a point, you have the option of simply using the existing monetary system. You could use "credits" or some equally generic term. Or maybe money has gone completely electronic and it's handled by your personal AI so it's rarely mentioned.

• Are there still multiple currencies - dollars, euros, yen - or has that all been scrapped in favor of one unit? 
• Did some other currency unseat the dollar and become the dominant currency?
• Does hard currency still exist? (I suspect it will last longer than expected. People like to hold things.)

If you're going far into the future or inventing alien cultures, the fantasy questions come back into play.

Is money a headache you'd rather not worry about, in a story, or did you wrestle with some of these questions?

J: Jupiter

What else would I be doing for J? :)

My science fiction universe, which I call the Jovian Frontier, took root around this giant planet for several reasons. One was the deep influence that the movie 2010 had on my young brain. (I blogged about that.) Another is the size and inherent challenges of the system. Jupiter seems to have an endless supply of moons, it's separated from the inner planets by the asteroid belt, and it's too far from the sun to even pretend to do any farming. It requires true independence from Earth's resources if you're going to set up a homestead here.

Jupiter itself was the fun part. It taught me some important things about getting around using real-world physics -- because I wanted this universe to be as hard-SF as possible. Let me try to explain one of those things by talking about some of Jupiter's moons.

The four biggest moons
Jupiter's four biggest moons are all found close to its equatorial plane -- they orbit more or less in line with the planet's equator. These are the moons you've probably heard of: Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. They're a natural target for colonization (and fighting over) because they're large and relatively easy to get to because their orbits are nice, neat circles around the middle of the planet.

The prograde moons
Outside of the four biggest moons, there are six prograde (orbiting in the same direction Jupiter turns) moons. Four of them orbit at an angle of about thirty degrees relative to Jupiter's equatorial plane. The other two are off doing their own thing.

The retrograde moons
Outside of the six prograde moons, there's a wild array of retrograde (orbiting opposite to Jupiter's turning) moons. Most of them are less than 10 kilometers in diameter, and they're generally grouped by their angle of inclination relative to Jupiter's equatorial plane. These angles are numbers like 150, 165, and 140.

The "Seven Sisters" (as I call them)
The seven largest moons outside of the inner four are: Himalia, Lysithea, Elara, Carme, Ananke, Pasiphae, and Sinope. Leda gets an honorable mention. That's everything that's more than 10 kilometers across, outside of the inner four. The first three plus Leda are the prograde moons at a thirty degree angle that I mentioned. The others are large members of their similar-angle groups.

Why am I going on about angles?
Because traveling further than you have to, in space, is expensive. And dangerous.

All of the planets in our solar system orbit the sun within a fairly tight plane -- which is to say that when the planets "line up" there's one a little "higher," one a little "lower" but they're all fairly close to each other. Therefore all the places you want to travel to and from do not require angling yourself too dramatically away from everything else.

Which means, by extension, that when spaceships are coming and going from the entire Jupiter system, they're going to approach it along a fairly tight band of vectors that line up pretty well with its own equator.

Which means that the equatorial plane -- and the moons convenient to it -- are where the traffic is going to be. Where there's money to be made. It's also where the four biggest moons are, the ones that can give a ship the most help with slingshot acceleration or braking. (Free acceleration? Hell yes.)

The other moons can be expensive to get to, depending on where they are in their orbit -- you'll have to burn all the way out there and brake on your own. The seven sisters can help a little with that, but the rest of the dinky rocks are even worse.

This told me a few things about the Jupiter system: where the center of town is, where the boondocks are -- though even the boondocks get their turn close to the equatorial plane, it should be noted -- and the importance of location, location, location.

How does ease of travel (or difficulty) impact your story?

I: Immortals

Vampires are the most common variety of immortal being one comes across in fiction, but there have been others. Extremely long life can verge on immortality, as with classic-style elves. In science fiction, immortality can come by way of downloading minds into vat-grown replacement bodies.

Immortality brings some unusual factors into play, some of which have been addressed well and extensively in novels. The importance of long-term relationships -- and how they can sour -- in Anne Rice's vampire novels, for example. Grudges that go on for centuries. The loss of humanity (and questioning what humanity is) and the scarring effect of doing monstrous things to survive. Good stuff, all of it, as the popularity of vampires attests.

But there are some recurring facets of immortals that I question, too.  

They're rich

Up until 1933, if a bank failed in the United States the account holders usually got nothing. Their money was gone. For centuries, if your house burned to the ground you had nothing. If a lynch mob came after you with torches and pitchforks, you'd be lucky to escape with what's in your pockets. When an economy tanked, inflation would go through the roof and your horde of treasure isn't worth much anymore. 

So you spread out your assets, goes the logic. You invest in commodities like gold and jewels and hope you can hide them well enough that they'll still be there when you need them. (Really? Your staff is that trustworthy?) Invest in a widely varied portfolio and hope something pans out somewhere. One of these companies will be the next Microsoft, right? And it won't crash like Enron, of course. 

I'd love to read a story about a 700-year-old vampire who's poor. In fact I'm claiming that idea, I may need to write that myself. Can you imagine working shit jobs for hundreds of years?

They're out of the gene pool
Balancing long life with a low reproductive rate is reasonable for world-building purposes. However, it does leave out some interesting possibilities. I had a chance to think about them in the course of my current fantasy monstrosity.

If one's immortality is acquired, not inherent, then one could still have a "normal" family with one major difference: you're going to outlive them all. Not just your spouse but your children too. And your grandchildren.

How long do you remain involved in their lives? What's your role? Can you afford to be emotionally invested?

This was touched on a little in Highlander, except that the immortals couldn't have children. If anyone knows of other stories that addressed this, please mention them in comments.

They have "refined tastes"
Or are they just jaded due to having seen it all, done it all, and there's only so many ways you can do a thing anyway. It doesn't matter if the thing in question is sex, murder, cuisine or high fashion. Novelty is a dead end, on the grand scale of things.

At what point in immortality are you just so damn bored that you can't stand it anymore?

Just some thoughts. What aspect of vampires sticks in your craw? (aside from the sparkly part, LOL)

This is a topic that will come up in a character conversation later in the A-to-Z run. I'll link to it here afterwards.

H: Hull breach

An important consideration in any hard science fiction story. Some of my betas did bring up the question of whether my characters ought to be waving guns around in spaceships, given how deadly a hull breach would be.

Photo by Ivan Freaner, at sxc.hu

The speed at which a bullet leaves a gun (its muzzle velocity, in feet/sec or meters/sec) can range from 680 - 1300 f/s (207 - 396 m/s) in pistols ranging from .32s to .45s. Consider that here-and-now bullet-proof glass, steel doors, and protective vests can maintain integrity even when hit by higher-velocity weapons, getting into the 2000 - 2500 f/s (609 - 762 m/s) range.

Can damaged bullet-proof glass stand up to normal air pressure against a hard vacuum on the other side? I don't know. But I don't think it's unreasonable to say that such a thing could be built, right here, with today's technology.

It's probably expensive. It's probably heavy. Those are both problems when you're trying to put ships into space, but it's a good thing science fiction isn't limited to today's technology.

There's a good reason that you wouldn't want to go into space in anything that wasn't a minimum of bullet-proof, though: micro-meteorites. These are small rocks, generally less than a gram (smaller than bullets) but they travel at anything from one to eighty kilometers a second (0.6 to almost 50 miles a second, so even the slow ones are doing over 3100 f/s).

Ordinary meteoroids are up to one meter (about a yard) in diameter and have been recorded at speeds of up to 26 miles/s (42 km/s). You could run into one of those moving at bullet velocities, certainly.

Getting back to gunpowder weapons, though, I think they're reasonable enough on a spaceship once you take these factors into account. One could go to the trouble to invent a laser gun or some kind of energy blaster, but consider:

• Handheld gunpowder weapons already have a good 400 years of technological development behind them and a proven track record of efficient killing. The science and physics are well understood.
• Yes, gunpowder will burn in a vacuum. The oxygen it needs is already bound up in the molecules.
• Yes, automatics can be modified to function in zero gravity.
• Recoil can be minimized, or (I would guess) managed in such a way to distribute the force and cancel itself out. As much as possible. I've tried to have my characters "use" the generated force to their advantage. 
• They make loud noises and are scary. Yes, that sounds dumb but the intimidation factor should never be overlooked. It's why pistols in television shootouts are loud as shotgun blasts.
• And to address a pet peeve: they are far easier to use than a knife or, God forbid, a sword. A four-year-old can kill someone with a gun. Swords take years to master, and whenever one gets pulled in science fiction I roll my eyes.

But I'm a hard sci-fi aficionado, and I'm not going to deny anyone the use of a good blaster or a dramatic lightsaber if that's what they want in a story. What would you arm your sci-fi characters with?

F: The Foxfire Books

The Foxfire Book series is the collected works of a mid-1960s high school magazine in which the students went up into the Appalachians and collected information on folk crafts, lore and wisdom before it died out. Bless them.

I'm a crafter, and in addition I just like to know things, so I bought several of the volumes. But as I was working my way through them, I began to ask myself how much these skills would have changed since medieval times and how applicable they would be to your average fantasy world.

Certainly there has been some impact of scientific knowledge -- where exactly is hard to say, since a lot of this stuff is very basic chemistry, physics and math. The chemical reaction that creates soap hasn't changed since it was discovered. What did change was where the fat and the lye came from -- and these books are basic enough that they talk about creating lye from (alkaline) wood ash and water. That hasn't changed in a thousand years, I would bet.

Other things like weaving baskets or building log cabins change with the availability of materials or the needs of those using them, but the underlying principles are the same whether you're in Appalachia or Gondor.

How much bearing these things have on a fantasy story depends on the characters, of course. Princesses and knights probably won't be churning butter or building chairs from scratch very often. I'll confess that I've always taken an interest in the more common folk, in fantasy worlds. The ones that do all the work in the background so that the noble-born main characters can eat a hot meal, get a good night's sleep and a jump on a fresh horse in the morning.

There are many books in this series, and they've been collected and re-collected with different themes -- cookbooks, wine making, etc. -- so they are not difficult to find. I bought the ones that were of most relevance to me (#1, 2, 5 and 8) and they have a place of honor on my reference shelves.

C: Crops

I'm using "crops" as a shorthand for "salable goods/services produced domestically." What crops is your fantasy kingdom (or science fiction space station) focused on producing?

I built a small fantasy kingdom with a New England-ish climate and it needs to be able to both sustain itself and trade a bit with the neighbors. You don't have to understand farming or economics in detail, but it's good to at least sketch these things out and think about them when you're world-building. It's going to affect what's on the table when people sit down to eat, what they're wearing, which craftsmen/guilds have more clout in society, and plenty of other things.

I'm not an economic expert, so I'm going to do this in very vague terms. I'll try to keep this "short." 

Grains: mostly oats, due to climate, but wheat too. Hay.

Fruits, Vegetables: cabbage, potatoes, beets, peas, squash, spinach and lettuce. Rhubarb. Fruit will include apples and maybe pears, maybe cherries... raspberries and blueberries, yes. Concord grapes, or the equivalent.

Livestock: Sheep are a multipurpose critter: milk, meat, and wool. All of them very trade-able. Also, cows for milk, beef, and leather. Pigs, chickens, etc.

Photo by Melissa R. Addison

Horses: This is probably the closest thing to a luxury my kingdom produces: warhorses. The knights you put in the saddle are a luxury item too, but we're not going to be exporting those.

Salt: This can be tough (I recommend Mark Kurlansky's book for reasearch), but vital to the economy. My kingdom does have a northern coastline where one could produce sea salt via either evaporation or freezing. I doubt they'll make enough to export -- might need to import some, in fact.

Cheese: Very consumable and very exportable, both sheep and cow varieties. 

Beer: Since I'm fond of beer, I give free rein to all kinds of beer and ale and the seasonal varieties thereof. 

Lumber: You need to make beer barrels out of something, after all.

What does all this mean
The productivity of a land speaks directly to its ability to support a population of people who don't have to farm for a living and can instead spend all their time weaving cloth, carving wood, learning to wield a sword or, perhaps, reading books and thinking. Historically speaking, one can make a living off farming in a New England-ish climate. But the fact that all of New England has, since its colony days, had only one major city to speak of (Boston) gives one an idea that it's not that rich of a living.

My little kingdom may be short on the finer things in life, like education or high culture, but they can keep their children fed and warm, and they produce enough to sell raw materials and transportable food to that big empire to their south. Unfortunately, that was also what drew the empire's attention and made them worth trying to conquer. But that's a different story...

B: Braies

Braies (with hose) on the man in blue, and just braies
on the man to the left of the pillar

There are many (many) terms out there for underwear, and I eventually settled on braies for men's underwear in my fantasy monstrosity -- mostly because it fits the language style I wanted (antiquated but not intimidatingly so) and it's another thing for me to argue with SpellCheck about (not that I needed help with that.)

Costume research is one of those things that looks like it should be simple, but turns out to be complex because there is so much information out there and much of it is contradictory or misinformed by the heavy influence of Hollywood and modern sensibilities. When it comes to medieval-style clothing, I've found serious re-enactors and SCAers to be a good resource (though it can take a lot of slogging through bad links.) They can also offer insights into sewing, wearing and working in the outfits. 

As an example of tricky research: medieval women's underwear. There's near-universal agreement that women wore a shift/chemise under their dresses, which was essentially a lightweight dress itself. Over time, it evolved into the slip (and who wears slips anymore?) But that's where agreement ends.

Eventually, I had to conclude that there's no solid evidence either way on the question of whether medieval women wore underpants/panties at all. There's no solid evidence of breast-supporting devices until corsets came along, either, though binding (in the form of a bandage-like wrapping) does get mentioned now and then.

So I actually went with the slightly scandalous option of my women wearing a shift under their dresses and nothing else unless it was that time of month (because good Lord, what a mess if they didn't.) They'd wear woolen hose when it's cold -- that's just being sensible.

How do you dress your fantasy characters?