A few fabulous items

Still in deadline mode, but some things to note:

My friend, talented debut author C.L. Wilson has an excellent blog in which she discusses the intricacies of World Building. And since her first book is one of the best fantasy novels I’ve ever read, I’d say she knows what she’s talking about. (Read more about her amazing new series here, or on the discussion page at Amazon.) Anyway, she says, in part:

“World building is not just for fantasy writers. Honest. All writers world build. It’s just that contemporary and historical fiction writers call their world building by different names, chief among them research, setting, and characterization.”

The entire series is well worth reading, but this part stuck out to me because, of course, my SSG books, which are very much real-world based, and have no vampires, fairies, or other magic creatures in them, also contain huge heaping scoops of worldbuilding. I cover an entire subculture, complete with its own rules, mores, jargon, etc, and I have to set up that world, its timeline, its history, etc., in order to be able to write the books. And I, too, make up maps. I have a map of the island of Cavador Key (in the third book). I have a floor plan of the tomb at Eli. I remember doing revisions and getting into conversations with my editor about exactly where the Rose & Grave tomb kitchen was in relation to the everything else, and how exactly they managed to shove Amy off the stair landing and whatever else I wrote about in the book. And though much of the setting and jargon is stuff I gleaned from the workings of real secret societies, I made up a lot of stuff as well. But whether real or imagined, I needed to make it understood to the reader… hence: worldbuilding.

And if I thought the worldbuilding was intense just from making up a secret organization, you wouldn’t believe the wake-up call that happened when I moved into the magical! Forget making up my own planet with its own climate and ecosystem (a’la Herbert) — I don’t know if I could even swing the “earth-like planet” of Wilson’s own high fantasy. Leave me be in real-world Rome!

(In passing, it’s much harder than one thinks to build a believable alien planet. There is a particular well-beloved SF series that was ruined for me when a supposedly educated-in-biology character, late in the book, remarked casually on the almost ridiculous lack of biodiversity on this well-settled planet. I only took a few biodiversity courses to complete my Geology major, but a lack of species indicates an unhealthy ecosystem — this is pretty much a rule. If I were a terraforming scout with even a marginal grasp of ecology and I found a whole planet teeming with uniform life like this, I’d jump back into hyperspace so fast you wouldn’t even know I was there. This still bugs me, years later. Why those idiots ever settled on that planet is beyond me. I was all, “Wait: there’s one tree, one bush, one bovid, one reptile, one fish? Run! Run now! Of course you’re all going to die!”)

Where was I? Yes, worldbuilding. Good stuff. Go learn from a master!

Speaking of worldbuilding masters, my pretend literary boyfriend* Scott Westerfeld is selling clothing inspired by his novels. What should I get? I’m leaning towards either the Special Circumstances v-neck, or the Polymath symbol long sleeve T-shirt. (I’d love the one that says, “You’re so 11:59,” but Mindcasters scare me.) I always wished I was a Polymath.

How long ’til Extras is out again?

* See the things I say when Justine is trapped on a train to DragonCon?