Posts Tagged ‘fantasy’
Coming in April: A Book Fair for the Moncton Area
April will be a welcome month for book lovers!
Come to the First Annual Greater Moncton/Riverview/Dieppe Independent Book Fair.
30 tables, 38 authors! Lots and lots of books!
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I will be there with all my books:
Kaye Eliot Mysteries,
Meniscus Science Fiction,
award-winning poetry
and, for the first time,
a children’s book!
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Wink in the Rain is about an elf who lives at the edge of a garden.
Wink loves the garden but he does not like the rain.
Visit with Wink and his friends as he finds a way to keep his wings dry.
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I often include black and white drawings in my books
but the drawings for Wink in the Rain needed lots of colour.
I used GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) to draw Wink, the plants in the garden,
the raindrops and Wink’s friend, the red-backed salamander.
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I will be showing Wink in the Rain for the first time at the Greater Moncton Independent Book Fair.
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Write the date in your calendar now: April 22nd. 10am – 4pm. Riverview Lions Community Center.
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If you are an author who’d like to participate in the Book Fair, please contact Allan Hudson at gmrdbookfair@gmail.com for details and registration.
Stay tuned for more about the Book Fair
and
Wink in the Rain!
All my best,
Jane
bracket fungi
On a drive last weekend, we saw this great example of bracket fungi growing on an old maple.
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Bracket fungi belong to a group of fungi called polypores. These produce the characteristic spore-producing bodies called conks. The shelf-shaped or bracket-shaped conks are a reproductive outgrowth of the main fungal body called the mycelium. As with all fungi, the mycelium is mostly unseen since it resides in wood or soil.
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Polypores are a significant part of the forest ecosystem because they are agents of wood decay. These fungi are efficient decomposers of lignin and cellulose.
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On a more fanciful note, the brackets of these fungi always remind me of ‘faerie stairs’, a way to ascend an ancient tree.
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bracket fungi
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in this forest
(staid
practical
grey)
could any form
construe to magic?
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fairy rings
moths in spectral flight
spider webs, witches brooms
burrows and subterranean
rooms, hollows in wizened
logs, red toadstools
white-spotted, mottled
frogs
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bracket fungi
steps ascending
a branchless tree
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(Previously published October 28, 2011 http://www.nichepoetryandprose.wordpress.com )
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All my best,
Jane
the joy of writing
I have been absent from my blog for a week. Tied up in the sheer enjoyment of writing my fantasy tale.
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an illustration of the interaction between the main character of my story and a Dock-winder alien
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I have discovered that there are two main parts to writing: the writing itself and the ‘administration’. The administration includes the editing, the creation of other materials associated with the writing (for me, drawings, maps and covers), the search for publication, the preparatory work toward publication, and the marketing (readings, selling books, making sure the cat doesn’t destroy your boxes of books).
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Although some of the administration is fun, it is the writing I love to do. This includes the research and the joy of creating the characters, the story, the plot, the various drafts.
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This project has been particularly involving. Perhaps it is the creation of an entirely new world. Perhaps the freedom of building characters I have not known before. Perhaps the thrill of writing in a genre I have always enjoyed reading but felt hesitant to write.
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the main character in the book – a practitioner of parkour and a woman who has hung on to hope in spite of adversity
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My story is simple. It is about a young woman who wants freedom and sets out on a search for that freedom. The plot is a little more complicated. In her search she encounters a man who seems to share her purpose. Adventures and romance ensue.
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So far I have
- the first in what I hope will be a series of three stories
- most of the first draft of the second story because it informs the first … in the writing of the second story I discover needed elements of the world I’ve created
- a cover design … one of the tasks ahead is to create a painting from my design
- a description of the planet Meniscus
- a map of the part of Meniscus in my story
- a glossary since some of the words in the story are unique to the created world – units of measurement, plants and animals, and so on
- a condensed guide to the main language used on the planet (everything in the text is translated but having a dictionary is just fun)
- drawings to illustrate some of the action in the story
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a map to go with the story
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My plans are to pull this all together and venture into the world of self-publishing. I have a friend who has lots of experience with Amazon publishing and is willing to share his ability.
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I have also hired an editor to work with me on the project so my book will be the best it can be.
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I will be looking for some beta-readers, so if you are a regular reader, like sci-fi, fantasy, romance, and adventure, and enjoy reading accessible poetry, let me know by leaving a request in the comments, including a little about your reading life and genre preferences, and whether you have been a beta-reader before.
From this I will choose a few beta-readers and I will exchange what I hope is a great read for some feedback.
A beta-reader provides general comments on readability, identifies parts of the story not easily understood, points out any ‘bugs’, and lets me know what they enjoyed/disliked about the book.
The book will be short (9,500 words) and about 100 pages (stretched out since it is written in poetic lines and includes illustrations and a map). There is some violent content, sexual content and alien profanity, so beware.
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Back to writing. And ‘administrative’ duties!
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Copyright 2016 Jane Tims
choosing book covers and titles
I was recently at a writing workshop about independent (or self) publishing. The instructor took us through an interesting exercise … creation of a book title and book cover for a story. Each of us was asked to provide the potential name of a book and a verbal description of the book’s cover. The audience tried to guess the book genre, general plot and story.
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This exercise illustrated how important it is for writers considering independent publication of their work to chose titles and book covers carefully. This would be a great exercise for anyone trying to see if their ideas get a good initial reader response.
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I provided the title for my new fantasy tale: Meniscus
and a verbal description of the following cover sketch:
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Most people guessed correctly that this will be a Science-fiction/Fantasy (I think the alien sky helped). They also thought the book might be about an encounter between alien species.
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Only two people in the audience knew what ‘meniscus’ meant.
Google provides the following definition:
me·nis·cus
noun
Physics– the curved upper surface of a liquid in a tube.Optics– a lens that is convex on one side and concave on the otherAnatomy– a thin, fibrous cartilage between the surfaces of some joints
three fantasy characters
On Friday, I introduced my current writing and drawing project – creation of a short fantasy tale. The story is about a young woman who tries to trade an old life for a new. The setting is an alien planet named Meniscus. I have three main characters:
- The young woman is a Human named Odymn. Odymn is in her thirties, living a life of servitude on Meniscus. Every night she escapes confinement to practice her passion of parkour. Parkour is the discipline of moving through the landscape in the most efficient way possible, running, jumping, vaulting, climbing and rolling. The discipline involves strength, endurance and flexibility and has allowed Odymn to reclaim and have control over at least one part of her life. Odymn has bright red hair which is about to get her into a lot of trouble.
- The man she meets during one of her parkour adventures is a genetically enhanced human, a Eu-hominid. He is a rover, moving from place to place to earn his living. He wears a special kind of armour and weaponry which taps into the electrical forces in his body. He has strength and endurance but almost no flexibility. He does not engage in idle chatter, to say the least. So far he has no name, so I just refer to him as Eu-hom. It’s OK if you are thinking names are not my strong point!
- After some encounters with other hominids and creatures on the planet, Odymn and Eu-hom set off on some adventures. At one point they encounter Wen-le-gone, a sentient, passive, furry creature known as an Argenop. Wen-le-gone adopts Odymn as his friend but does not warm to the Eu-hom, not at all.
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Now that you have met my characters, I’ll show you what they look like.
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Odymn has a peculiar scar on her forehead. How she got the scar and what it means to her is part of the story.
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The Eu-hom is a rather serious character, not much of a conversationalist and not easy to befriend.
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The Argenop, Wen-le-gone, is the village healer and sage. Looks a little like my cat.
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Next time, I’ll show you drawings of some of the other humanoids and creatures of Planet Meniscus.
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Copyright Jane Tims 2016
learning curves
In the last two weeks, I’ve taken a detour. Instead of working on my poetry or novels, I’ve had some fun creating a fantasy tale. The story is about a young woman who tries to escape servitude only to find herself back in a similar situation. The story takes place in the future, on a planet far from earth.
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Writing the tale was fun. Creating a simple language to use in the dialogue was interesting. Finding some names for the characters and places was a challenge but very satisfying.
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Making a map to describe the setting was no fun at all. I liked creating the spaces, thinking about where to put the landscape features and towns. But, I had to make a decision:
- draw the map by hand and risk wanting to change names or details in the future, or
- create the map in a layered digital format where I could make changes anytime I want
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I decided to do the map in GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program), a free on-line app similar to Photoshop Pro. I have never worked with GIMP before, so I have had some frustrating hours coming up the learning curve. But, I have prevailed and I now have a map to suit my story.
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a map to go with the story
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The story is told in poetry and is based on a world where water doesn’t behave as it does here on Earth. Instead it effervesces and tries to flow upward. Hence a water-climb rather than a water-fall. This is just a taste of the story. The main characters are fleeing, pursued by an alien species, the Gel-heads (Gel-heads have transparent skin, like green gelatin). Windfleers are flocking birds, like large white starlings.
Terrain changes. A climb, the way rocky, tangled.
Glimpses of a water-climb.
Shouts in the valley behind them, Gel-heads
sensing the prey is near. Need for stealth and speed.
Burst from the forest to a plateau. The En’ast Water-climb
above them. Startle a flock of windfleers. Cacophony
and dithering panic. Two hundred pairs of wings swirl upward,
a tornado of feathers. The Gel-heads alerted.
Nowhere to run. The water-climb a bracket at the head of the valley.
A colossal outcrop, sheer walls of stone. Jagged cliffs where water ascends.
Shallow pool at the base, fed by artesian groundwater. The water bubbles
and leaps, each droplet climbs, then falls, net flow upward.
Rocks slick.
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Copyright Jane Tims 2016
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