Category: Research

  • Totally Off Topic: Writers Who Role Play

    I posted this as a response to a comment about office supplies and role-playing games in one of the “Write A Book With Me” posts. But I realized I’m curious. How many of you who write are or have also been role-playing gamers? (D&D, GURPS, another system…whatever. If you’ve sat in a room with friends…

  • Questions for New Yorkers

    My MC has a 1-bedroom apartment at the Parkchester Apartments at 2000 East Tremont Avenue, in the Bronx. She’s a professor at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, at 15 E. 84th St., New York. I know that, leaving from home, she can take the train from the Lexington Avenue station to…

  • Back with a whisper, not a bang

    I’ve been doodling on the “dreaming the dead” novel, and pulling together themes and concepts and characters. Nothing much on paper, yet—some clusters, some questions.

  • Marching through the Middle East

    Tam sent me a link to an animated map of the Middle East and surrounding territory through the ages. The thing is silent, completely apolitical, and absolutely astonishing. Take a look. It’s a visual of 5000 years of history in 90 seconds, and well worth the time. Actually, all the maps are pretty mind-blowing. I’ve…

  • Quantum Entanglement, God Immanent, and Talking Socks

    So I got to reading about quantum entanglement and thinking about how it could be used in with worldbuilding to create a magic system. Quantum entanglement is the extraordinarily cool fact that quanta—the very, very smallest, indivisible particles that are force carriers for the matter of the universe—form connected pairs, and these pairs have connections…

  • One of the Best Websites Ever

    The Dictionary of the History of Ideas. Researching something to pass on to one of my Worldbuilders, and ended up here half a dozen times. Fantastic site. Note: It’s an OLD reference work: some of its entries are outdated, and some are flat-out wrong. Nonetheless, the majority of what’s in there is solid, and the…

  • I’m Offering Worldbuilding Tutoring on Ebay

    Here’s the deal. My home kidney-removal kit is broken, so I can’t auction a kidney, and in my entire life, I have never successfully fried up a grilled cheese sandwich that looked like the Virgin Mary. Living on your writing is tough, this year has been especially tough, and at the moment I’m in a…

  • Current-Day Slavery

    The issue of current slavery got barest mention in Create a Character Clinic, as part of a development cycle. However, in reality, it deserves much more than a minor brush. Here are other links you owe it to yourself to explore. Anti-Slavery Society Slavery in Niger Arab Slavery of Africans Slavery in Sudan Finding information…

  • Back from Lunch

    Just at 1000 words, so I have to keep going on I See You. Lost time this morning to locale research. I found good stuff, and I needed all of it, but it cost me time-wise. I haven’t even gotten to the wreck yet.

  • Writing. Swamped.

    Deadline bearing down on me like a train. For you amusement, try this. Then, for MY amusement, tell me how it works. (If you think it didn’t work, check your math.) My daughter sent me this link while I was working. Bad girl!