[30 questions] day 14
March 16, 2010
14. How do you map out locations, if needed? Do you have any to show us?
Lol, I think I'm the Queen of Maps. I make one for just about every land I work on/with, from Glana to Rubikia. Currently I'm not on the computer that has Rubikia's map, (either of them), or else I'd show you... it's big though so I'd have to put it on flikr anyway! I've maps for lemme see... Kritter, (including Ty Car, Amin Durr, Teryon), Glana, Fylde (including Germania, etc), Rubikia (including Vulia, Abandonia/Pyq), and Perriwinkle (including Yeloria).
How I come up with them is kind of half "as I go", and half "make a map." Sometimes I just get into the mood of making a map. I think the Glana one came to me in a dream, in its entirety! But I also have to explore the worlds a bit first, for instance with my current big project I've been exploring the area around Black Lake up to the border of Teryon and then Teryon itself, and have found some surprising stuff! The gardener plants are my current favorite:) They are huge and spiky, and since there's some very dangerous animals in the...
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[30 questions] Day 13
March 15, 2010
13. What's your favorite culture to write, fictional or not?
This is a tough question, because my writing's very focused on cultures. All the cultures of the various creatures and people in Kritter, Glana, Perriwinkle, the Bac book, "Nirvana of Many Allahs," the Rubikia book, and the myriad stories I've written over nineteen years' work!
To put them into one nutshell is extremely difficult. So you know, here's the skinny:
I love the most I think to explore creatures I don't often see in others' writing, if at all. So far I've gone for the cultures of Harpies, Goblins, Piptids and Bodbglines (the last two are my own creations), with regards to Kritter. Then there's the races of Rubikia, which are entirely mine (though my dad helped with the language stuff:)). The people of Glana are generic humans, but they live in a sociological settlement kind of world. The people and creatures of Perriwinkle on the other hand are half my creations, half not: for instance there's the Gingerbread people who are basically construction workers there, and there's also the Houses of Cards. There is a lot taken from fairy tales and nursery rhymes in that book, with a small...
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[30 questions] Day 9-12
March 14, 2010
9. How do you get ideas for your characters? Describe the process of creating them.
The basic answer is "everywhere," but if I broaden it out...
I do get them a lot from RPG and gaming in general, but that's been the case since I was in college. I didn't get them specifically from the game, I'd think "oh, I want to make a -" and then would try it out. I have made tales with two of the characters I created for playing at Mylanders in this fashion, and in World of Warcraft it's similar, except the characters in that case are often an amalgamation of several of the WoW characters.
However, I also get character ideas from watching TV; there's some amazing people out there, who I've snagged for thoughts in my head. Same with real life!
10. What are some really weird situations your characters have been in? Everything from serious canon scenes to meme questions counts!
Hm... I'm a fantasy/sf writer, what do count as weird in that sense lol??
I guess though, maybe the strangest one yet is the Bac person changeover that happens in the Bac book, when Perry has to go into the...
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[30 questions] Day 8
March 10, 2010
...anyway, here's today's question:
8. What's your favorite genre to write? To read?
Well, at first glance this should be an easy one, but it isn't at all, no precious. You see, I write in fantasy, horror, sf and everything in between. I love all of them, wish I understood horror writing better, wish I knew science better so I could do better sf, can get so immersed in world-building for fantasy that I lose track of time...
Yeah. Despite the fact that I can come up with fantasy stories like nobody's business, I'd say my favorite genre to write in has to be science fiction. It's the genre of Rubikia, that I've spent years working on, developing, making a dictionary for the languages, creating languages, world-building and so on. It's the genre of memorable stories like "Ballad of the Horny Jay," (http://www.aburt.com/ifiction/stories/57/) about "space tourism" back when that was just an idea, and of the Cherryn series (http://www.dotguy.net/serials/)m that has to do with people being logged in too much back before that became an idea. It's the genre of the first book I'll have published, the one coming out this year (I think and hope)... It's the...
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[30 questions] Day 6-7
March 9, 2010
Ok I lost count... but you know me and numbers. Anyway here's the stuff for 6-7, also on my LiveJournal:
So, past couple days' questions:
6. Where are you most comfortable writing? At what time of day? Computer or good ol' pen and paper?
Lol, answer to the first part of this is a little complicated. I've had to adapt this a good bit because of illness, so I've learned to write wherever I can, actually. I've written in hospitals, medical rehab places, parks, porches, my parents' yard, bus stops, on trains, buses, the T line, and while out walking (used to drive my best friend in college crazy when I'd have to stop and scribble notes every few minutes). I've written all over the campuses of my college, other peoples' colleges, my highschool, and in various restaurants (the most notable was the last time we went out for Chinese, and I had ideas for the Paladin story but no paper left... so I wrote all over the paper placemats they had at our table -- and then took those with me)!
Really, though, my favorite place to write is in my bed, propped up on my ancient husband pillow. ...
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[30 questions] day 5
March 5, 2010
5. By age, who is your youngest character? Oldest? How about “youngest” and “oldest” in terms of when you created them?
Youngest has to be by age Barbra, youngling of Robbu Misha Zem (that's her full name, at least lol). Remember I said that there were different varieties of Rubikians? Well, Misha had a lot of younglings, and for Rubikians that means that there are more chances for such mutation to happen. So Barbra is a bunia, which is sort of a very short-haired creature with elongated ears, and she has a high proficiency for working with the elements, like her mother.
Youngest in terms of creation, though, I think is Lohnen, who is one of the Elves at Black Lake, and who is currently Kline's nemesis. He's constantly taunting Kline, calling him _human_, as if it's a dirty word, and insisting Kline's friend Helmut the Paladin died because Kline was incompetent, and therefore there's no way Kline could become a Paladin himself. He's beaten Kline up several times so far in the training grounds because he is stronger and swifter, and he wants to be a follower of Clurra Mosthle, the Clurra in charge of death and dying, when...
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[30 questions] day 4
March 4, 2010
from LiveJournal:
4. Tell us about one of your first stories/characters!
Well the stuff about Rubikia is the oldest I know of, other than something I wrote in kindegarten or so regarding a big blue bear that the principal was impressed with lol. Rubikia's my pet project, the Kritter stuff ended up being everything I wanted it to be -- i.e. successful. I spent literally years from grade school to post-college writing drafts of the tales, compiling notes, inventing languages (both spoken and sign), and generally world-building. I have no idea how it actually started, but I know it's based on a number of stuffed animals I had when I was a kid and who were my only friends, I know that I drew out a lot of the stories I'd later write down, when I was very young, and that when I finally did get it into my head to start writing it I was in junior high and well, it therefore ended up being at that point a very junior-high melodramatic Cinderella-ish tale about how Misha and Lion met at a ball one night and he couldn't take his eyes off her. There are felinor, lizarren,...
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[30 questions] Day 2-3
March 2, 2010
partly xposted from LiveJournal:
2. How many characters do you have? Do you prefer males or females?
TONS, is the answer to the first. To the second... I dunno. I write women better, I think, and girls; they range from helpless to kick-ass lol. Guys I have a bit of a problem making into strong characters, on the other hand: having trouble making Sir Kline at least slightly sympathetic! (though according to certain sources he's getting there:))
3. How do you come up with names, for characters (and for places if you're writing about fictional places)?
EVERYWHERE. I like watching movie credits, and I definitely get them from reality television as well, from songs, from people I've seen on the street, from the news. And every so often I also get the weirder ones from my imagination, or words I've mangled accidentally:)
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[30 questions] Day 1
February 28, 2010
xposted from my LiveJournal...
30 days of questions...
1. Tell us about your favorite writing project/universe that you've worked with and why.
That'd have to be Kritter; I've gotten the chance to do so much world-building with it, which is my favorite thing to do in writing. It isn't at your local coffee shop or anything just yet, but it's going to be available for all you DnDOG players in several months! (or at least a small part of it will be)
(here's the rest, for anyone's interest)
1. Tell us about your favorite writing project/universe that you've worked with and why.
2. How many characters do you have? Do you prefer males or females?
3. How do you come up with names, for characters (and for places if you're writing about fictional places)?
4. Tell us about one of your first stories/characters!
5. By age, who is your youngest character? Oldest? How about “youngest” and “oldest” in terms of when you created them?
6. Where are you most comfortable writing? At what time of day? Computer or good ol' pen and paper?
7. Do you listen to music while you write? What kind? Are there any songs you like...
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To Other Authors I know (x-posted to other blogs I'm on)
January 5, 2010
Here's a note from our fearless Blog Tour person, at Drollerie Press: an invite to cross-exchange info.
Jess
Hi all,
I've been conducting blog tours with my fellow Drollerie authors for the past year, and we've been having quite a bit of fun visiting each other's journals and posting on various topics. For 2010 though, I'm seeking to expand the scope of our efforts some and find non-Drollerie authors who might be interested in doing mutual blog tours or post exchanges with us at a suitable regular interval. Last year, we did this on a monthly basis, but this is negotiable depending on what other authors might be interested.
We're writing in a mix of genres, from urban fantasy to romance to SF to horror, and we are predominantly e-book authors, although some of our titles are available in print format. I'd be most interested in finding authors who share our genres, or who are e-pubbed through other publishers with whom Drollerie could get some cross-promotion going.
If you're interested in such a thing, I invite you to email me at annathepiper@ gmail.com. You can find out more about Drollerie Press here:
http://drolleriepre ss.com
And our last blog tour...
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