Worldbuilding: Columbian Exchange in Secondary Worlds

Many of the worlds you'll build will have multiple continents, and if you're doing things correctly, each of those continents will have their own biodiversity.  Each one will have its own specific native plants and animals that may or may not be domesticatible, and the nature of those species help determine the civilizations that thrive there. 

But sooner or later in the history of your world, those two cultures are going to meet, and when they do... interesting things will happen.

Some call when that happened in our world-- when Eurasian/African biodiversity met American-- the Columbian Exchange.  Now, just ignoring the political and social elements of what happened when Columbus and those that followed him came to Americas, on a pure level of biological exchange, it was incredibly uneven for the Americas.

By which I mean, the Columbian Exchange meant that the cultures of Europe, Asia and Africa got. to name a few: potatoes, beans, corn, blueberries, peppers, tomatoes, chocolate and vanilla.  Foodstuffs and flavors that were nutritiously dense and became integral parts of the diets of those cultures, and helped result in population booms throughout those continents.  And the Americas got a Disease Apocalypse.  Yes, the Americas also got horses, pigs, cattle and wheat, but those mostly came with settlers who moved into the Americas, which was relatively easy to do, what with the Disease Apocalypse, killing an estimate 80% of the population.

So, that's the big question: does your worldbuilding take into account what may (or did) happen when Culture A crosses the ocean and meets up with Culture B?  Will that exchange be relatively equal, or will it strongly weigh in favor of one or the other?  How will those cultures see each other?  Will there be unintended consequences from that meeting?  How will your world be changed?

Edits and Research and Maps, Oh my!

This blog has, unfortunately for the moment, devolved a bit into "Stuff is happening and I'm busy!"  Today is no exception to that.  In part because I'm finalizing the edits for Murder of Mages so I can turn it in tomorrow. 

On top of that, I've got a fair amount of pre-ArmadilloCon work on my plate.  Part of that is the administrative side of the Writers' Workshop, part is the actual workshopping work for my group, and part is doing additional research and reading to prepare for some of the panels I'm on.

As part of that research, I've been revisiting Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse, two books that have strongly shaped my ideas of worldbuilding.  I've also been thinking about the Columbian Exchange, and how that could be applied to worldbuilding.  I'll be posting more on that in the near future.  And that ties into geography, first and foremost, shaping the worlds we build.

And with geography, there's maps.  I've been re-working the maps to appear in Thorn of Dentonhill and Murder of Mages so they are of publishable quality.  Which is an excellent way for me to be productive while the back of the brain churns on writing things. 

So, back to work in the word mines.

Brevity

I was commissioned to write two one-minute plays.

That requires word economy.

Hint Fiction also required maximum value from each word.

Very different writing muscles from novels, but useful ones to build.

July is a busy month.

Thorn of Dentonhill Available for Pre-order on Amazon

So, I wasn't sure what I was going to write about today.  There's a lot on my plate right now, including finishing edits to Murder of Mages, as well as finalizing other details for that (street map, acknowledgements, cover notes for artist), and on top of that ArmadilloCon and the Writers Workshop is in less that three weeks.

And that's on top of the things I have to do to keep the mortgage paid and the lights on.

But then, I discovered* something pretty amazing that I had to share:

Thorn Of Dentonhill is available for pre-order on Amazon! And it also has a Goodreads page! 

I'll admit, I completely geeked out when I saw an ISBN number.  Again, it's the little things like that which bring it home: this is a really real thing that is happening.

So that more or less made my week.

---

*- By "discovered" I mean "ego-surfed and checked my Amazon author page".

State of the Writer: Halfway through 2014

Is the year already half over?  It feels like it flew by.  And yet I'm also eager for it to be over, since Thorn of Dentonhill is scheduled to be released in February 2015.  Despite everything, there's still something dreamlike and unreal about all this. 

Because this year has been, in many ways, all about anticipation.  I mean, do not get me wrong, I have been working: edits for Thorn, edits for Murder of Mages, and the rough draft of Elements of Aventil, aka Thorn II. 

And it's rough, but as of today, it's done.  Five months and change, which is the fastest I've turned around a rough draft of a full length novel.  It took a little longer than I had hoped, as I had really wanted to get it done before the end of May.  I just missed end of June.  But still: rough draft done.  Now to let the beta readers suffer go over it.

Which means only one thing: Get started on the rough draft for Murder of Mages II! 

Because this year-- the year of anticipation-- is also a year of opportunity.  Strike while the iron is hot.

And right now, dear friends and readers, I'm feeling like it's scorching hot.

The rest of the year will involve more writing, and whatever the next steps that are involved between now and publication.  Galley proofs, ARCs, and... whatever else.  I'm beyond excited.

I'll also be at ArmadilloCon.  If you can come-- July 25th to 27th-- I recommend it.  Come say hello.  I don't know if I'll be doing any more cons this year, but I intend to go to several more in 2015.

Because 2015 is going to be a very big year.

Picking Up the Gauntlet

So because of my post last week, I received a lot of spirited defenses of self/indy publishing, many of which struck me as missing the central point I was making: that agents and editors dig through a lot of crap to find the things they publish.  Several people argued that "people aren't waiting for publishers to tell them what to read, they're listening to reviews and recommendations from friends."  What this fails to recognize is that traditional publication is, in essence, a powerful form of recommendation: someone said, "I think this book is so worth reading, I'm financially backing it." 

So powerful that many reviewers and sellers take notice.  It is on that recommendation that most reviewers will accept the book to read.  (Most will not review self/indy books.)  It is on that recommendation that the sellers-- bookstores-- agree to stock it.  (Many will not stock self/indy books.)  And the individual people who work there will give their personal opinions to the customers.

So don't tell me that no one is listening to publishers for recommendation, because that is literally what the traditional model is.

The other argument I heard boiled down to, "Thanks to indy/self publishing, so many amazing books that wouldn't have seen the light of day are now available.  Readers can decide for themselves."

This may well be true.

I'm game.  I'd like to know what some of these amazing books are.  So, I'd like to hear some recommendations.

But wait!  I've got some rules.

1. You can't recommend your own book. The main reason for this is I think recommending your own book undermines the point of "so many amazing books are now available".  If you just tell me about your own book, what you're telling me is that you don't really care about all those amazing books, other than in the abstract sense of how promoting the idea helps your own book.  You're not telling me how indy/self helps readers "decide for themselves", you're telling me how indy/self helps writers sell their books.    If the system really is for the benefit for the readers, I want to know how it benefited you as a reader. 

2. No recommendations that started indy/self and then were picked up by a traditional publisher.  Because they've already received that recommendation bump.  I can find them in the traditional market, even if their path there wasn't entirely traditional.  Recommend something that I can't find on the traditional market.

So let's hear some recommendations!  Put my money where your mouth is.

Blessed are the Slushdivers

I don't want to bag on people who self-publish. There are good reasons to do it, and there are people who do it very well and have found great success doing it.  That's excellent for them.

That said,  I've got a big problem with the zealots who don't merely preach the gospel of self-publishing, but scream from the mountaintop how traditional publishing-- or "legacy" publishing, to use their attempt at a backhanded term-- is doomed to die.  That's it's already dead, and its proponents just don't realize it.

This is, of course, crap.

The big argument they like to make is that readers don't need publishers to make decisions about what's worth reading for them, they can find what they like for themselves.  That the people can be their own gatekeepers.

This is an argument made by someone who has never read through a slushpile.  Which is a shame, because it is something that every aspiring professional writer should do at least once.  To get a little perspective, if nothing else. 

So, for perspective, this is what agents and editors do:

Imagine a river of shit.  Roiling, torrential rapids of hot shit.  And careening through the eddies and currents of this river, there are diamonds.  And rocks.  Mostly rocks, but some diamonds.

And a few brave souls DIVE IN THERE and swim through that festering flow of feculence, searching for a couple diamonds.  They come out with what they find, sort out the rocks from the diamonds, and clean those off and sell them.  And by the nature of how things are, yes: some diamonds will not be found.  It's a shame, but that's a reality. 

This is a metaphor, but I'm really not exaggerating.

Really, really not.  I've read through slush submissions, and it can really be that bad.

Now, if you're game for diving in and finding your own diamonds: power to you.  Seriously. It isn't easy.  I'm pretty amazed that agents and editors are still constantly doing this to find new work. 

And I'm glad they do.  Because, on the whole, I'd MUCH rather go to the stand by the roadside with cleaned-and-polished diamonds then listen to the guy on the riverbank screaming that there's diamonds in the shit river and anyone can get.  He might be correct, but that doesn't change the fact that I appreciate the work that the divers do.  And if I resent anything-- as a reader-- its the assumption that I should want to dive in and find the diamonds myself. 

I leave that to the professionals.