C. L. Norman

Valdemar. Pern. Middle Earth. Oz. Narnia. Discworld. Shannara.

These are just a few of the worlds that great writers have created and then allowed readers from all over the world to go and play in them. Multiple books with multiple characters people them and each world has its own rules and feel and ambiance. And each one is real in the minds of their fans.

These worlds have always been an inspiration to me. I have a hobby of drawing maps of fantasy worlds and once I even fleshed it out with details on the people, countries, imports/exports, and more. However, I’ve never used that information to write a story or a series of stories connected by place and/or time. And yet it has always been a dream of mine to create a world that other people think of as fondly as they do of home.

And so while I work on other projects, I am going to create a world that I can use as a setting for several stories. I invite you to come and take a peek at my process and let me know what you think or if you are of a mind to create your own world, let me know what you’re doing.

To Map or Not To Map

For me this isn’t even a question. For years I’ve doodled coastlines along the edges of my homework or filled drawing pads with maps. As I place landmarks on the paper the world takes its first breath and stories, people, and histories start parading through my mind in wonderful vivid color.

But some of you may want to start somewhere else. Maybe with a timeline of important events in history or with a pantheon of gods to rival the Greeks. Or some other place.

Where ever you start, have fun with it.

For my purposes, I am going to start with a map.

Before I grab my pencil and paper there are a few other things I need before I start.

1. Drawing paper. I suppose I could use any old paper that comes to hand but I like drawing paper. It has a nice texture and the spiral top keeps my maps all in one place.
2. A couple of pencils. And by pencils I mean real pencils. None of those mechanical jobs. I hate mechanical pencils. My husband says I am a pencil snob. I say “So what?” I like the wooden pencil so much better.
3. Colored pencils. Maybe. I’ve never colored in a map before. I always worried that the coloring would obscure the labels on the cities and landmarks, or that it would make it difficult to add/change things later. So I will probably hold off on coloring until I am sure I have everything I want on there. Which might be much, much later.
4. A small notebook. The notebook is for all those crazy ideas or notions or thoughts that pass through my mind as I am drawing. Maybe this harbor is where pirates came ashore a millennia ago and are the fore-fathers of the great Alandai Empire. Maybe that lake is home to a mysterious spirit that only appears once every sixty-six years. These ideas may not be used later but if I don’t record them in some fashion I will forget them in the course of my busy life and the flood of thoughts that race through my mind during this creative process.
5. Time. This one is probably the hardest to come by but I’ve found I can do these maps in small steps easily in the space between other events in my life.

Decisions, Decisions

Do I want to show the entire world on the page or do I want to leave parts hanging off the edge that can be explored later? This question is a doozy. Having the freedom to add places later is a very, very good reason to leave parts of the map hanging off the page but I always think that if my characters (at least the more educated or worldly ones) know about those places, so should I. So I think I will show the entire continent(s). Besides if I don’t draw a circle around the page, there could always be lost continents or secluded island chains or any number of other mysteries beyond the borders of the known world.

What does the big picture look like? How many suns or moons does my planet have? Were the first peoples to this world native or did they come from somewhere else? Do the inhabitants have contact with other worlds/dimensions/etc? These and other questions like them don’t have to be answered yet but I like to keep them in mind while I start. The answers may influence which geographical landmarks I want to add.

Next week, I’ll put up a preliminary map and start in on cities, regions, countries, etc.

        

When I checked my email this morning, I found a wonderful email from the Kindle people talking about a couple new features they’ve set up for their authors.

Shelfari

One is that authors are now linked into Shelfari. They get a pretty little badge that says they are an author and they can manage a lot of cool extra features for their books/stories. I immediately headed over and filled in what I could for my little tales. It is so fun coming up with a “ridiculously simplified synopsis” for each of my stories. If you’ve read them and have any ideas for a synopsis post it here or over there. I’d love to see other folks ideas.

Here is a link to my Shelfari page. I’ve also included a link to it in my Links page.

Twitter

The other item they added was a link to the author’s Twitter account. This is a cool idea but for me, right now, not much help. I’ve tried Twitter but found it was a huge time-sink for me. I’ll probably go back to it eventually but as of this writing you won’t see a link to my Twitter feed on my Amazon Author page.

In Other News

I’ve been working on some things but in my typical fashion, I am busy procrastinating finishing anything. However, I should have a new John St. George short story for you in another week or two and a new teen science fiction short story in early June. I have a novel in the works as well but as I’ve never finished a novel I can’t tell you how long it will be until I release it but I am shooting for a release date before the end of summer. I will update you more as it gets closer.

        

I work in a Barnes & Noble that is connected to a mall. Not just a mall but THE mall for the entire community and most of this part of this state and the neighboring one as well. Barnes & Noble is open on Easter. The mall was not. Not surprisingly, the most common question, by far (and I do mean far), was “When does the mall open?” I wanted to sport a top hat a la Mad Hatter with a sign in the brim saying “The mall is closed for Easter.” The part that did annoy me was all the people demanding to know why would the mall close on Easter.

Really? I, the lowly bookseller in one store connected to a much larger mall,  is not going to know the answer to that. Aside from that the mall is closed every Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas with special hours on every other major holiday. These folks should have known to call at the very least before journeying in for a day of shopping. And for gosh sakes, don’t blame the shop-girl trying to sell a book or two during the middle of her Easter holiday.

But by far the best parts of my day were in the morning and the afternoon. I woke up at 6:30 am (missing my alarm for 3 am) to put the baskets together, imagining I heard the pitter patter of child feet with every crinkle of plastic. One of my children still believes in the bunny and I didn’t want to spoil that with my sleepiness.

Baskets ready, I spent a couple hours on my laptop before the first child (teen. Does that still count as a child?) made her appearance. Over the next hour, the other three kids gathered around. Then an hour doing Mad Libs and laughing with my children passed before I had to tear myself away to head for work.

After work, egg hunt time.

Finished the day out with dinner, some time researching family genealogy, and of course a new episode of Game of Thrones.

What a wonderful day. How was your Easter.

        

I just finished reading Eona by Alison Goodman and I screamed when I turned the last page. Yeah, I know. A strong reaction. And while it may sound negative, it is far from it.

Let me ‘splain.

This is the second book in a duology. The first book, Eon, I read a few months ago after spying it on the shelf at work and seeing the cover blurb by Tamora Pierce. Yes, a cover blurb sells books. At least to me. It has a fairly classic plot (one of my favorites) where a girl is disguised as a boy to gain power in a man’s world. This one was unique in that it was in a made-up Eastern-like fantasy world. Ms. Goodman made this world rich with details that do not drag the story down and when I finished the book, I was very glad to see that it was only a couple months until the sequel.

Tuesday, before the store opened, while displays were being set up, I stashed a copy of Eona near my work station so that I could buy it as soon as I clocked out. If it was so good why did it take you two days to finish it? you ask. Good question. I blame errands, children, and illness on the delay. <shakes fist>

I finished the book today and screamed as I mentioned before. I hate it when I live in a world for a few hours or days and I love the people, the place, the magic and then I am thrust out by the book drawing to a close. I can tell that this series will be one I read again, just so I can visit the Empire of The Celestial Dragons again.

Eona is a protagonist that is torn by conflicting emotions and desires. At the end, she is tempted by ‘the dark side’ that is insidious enough that I would have felt complete sympathy for her choosing that path. She is strong and far from perfect and completely sympathetic. I cried with her and rooted for her and feared for her. Through it all, I loved her. And I loved these books.

Note: I am a terrible book reviewer as I respond very emotionally to what I read and if I enjoyed the book a lot those emotions are chaotically positive and hard to describe.

        

At 4 am, a series of loud thumps and crashes woke me from my sound slumber. I stared at the ceiling for a moment, debating with myself if I really heard it, and if I did was it important enough to get out of bed to investigate. (Getting up that close to wake-up time pretty much guarantees that sleep time is over for me.) Deciding that indeed it was something I needed to investigate, I climbed out of bed and crept up the hall to the kitchen. Rounding the corner into the room, I saw the freezer door open. Suddenly, visions of kitty with ice cream on her chin danced in my head and I crept further into the room, dreading what I would find.

The black furry housecoat my husband wears is the exact shade of the kitty’s coat and I wasn’t reassured until I saw that it was man-shaped. I know, I know, I didn’t even think were-cat. What is wrong with me?

“Whatcha doin?”

“The icemaker is making a noise and it is driving me crazy. I am trying to get it to stop.” Did I mention my husband sleeps out in the living room on the recliner a lot? No, not because I kick him out of bed but because of his insane heartburn.

I reached into the freezer and fiddled with the thing and gave up after a mere 10 seconds. “I’ve got nuthin’.” And I turned around and went back to bed, hoping against hope that I could get another hour in before my alarm went off.

I did not get that hour and now I sit here in the living room (Hubby moved downstairs) listening to the icemaker make it’s noises (and they are normal noises, always were) and thinking about other sleepy-time adventures.

I have a history of sleepwalking. When my parents divorced when I was very young, I am told I spent the next year sleepwalking every night. I would toddle from room to room making sure everyone was where they were suppose to be. My mother told me this story and I have found that she exaggerated a lot of things but this one I believe because I still occasionally somnambulate. A few years ago, a friend was in our game room AKA back room playing some Magic: The Gathering with my husband after I had gone to bed.  His wife, who I had never met before, came to the front door with a crying two-year-old on her hip and knocked. Or so I am told. I got up from bed, let her in, and led her to the back room, and went back to bed with absolutely no memory of this. The next day at a birthday party, I met this lady for, what I thought, was the first time and was laughingly told differently.

That is just one very memorable instance of sleepwalking in recent years. Luckily, I don’t seem to leave the house while I am sleeping and I don’t do it very often anymore. A much milder form of it that I do much more often is talk in my sleep.

Talk in your sleep? you ask. No doubt thinking that that is normal. I do mumble and scream and yell in my dream state on occasion but I also hold entire conversations with folks in my sleep. I uphold my end of the conversation so well that folks have no clue that I am sleeping. Suddenly wishing I had cultivated this skill for use in the classroom. My children now have a firm rule that they can’t wake me up to ask permission to do something unless they are 100% sure that I am actually awake; longer conversations, getting me out of bed, the panicked breathless state that indicates I was awoken suddenly. My husband still insists on telling me the important things while I am asleep. “Work called and I have to go out of town.” My first clue that he is gone is when I can’t find his car in the garage the next morning.

Sigh.

And then there is the sleepy-time adventure my sisters still like to tease me about. I was 17 or 18, still living at home, when I heard my mother yelling in the middle of the night. I stumbled out of bed (weirdly enough, I wasn’t sleepwalking this time though I could have been for all the action I took) and found my mother and step-father in their robes yelling at a homeless (?) drunk (?) in our living room. It seems that this guy had gotten confused and wandered into our house—the front door was locked but the back was not—and liked the look of our couch.

So here I am with a stranger in our living room, in the middle of the night. Parents yelling. Stranger slurring his words loudly in response. And what do I do? I go back to bed.

Yep. No stranger danger for me in the middle of the night. I am too tired for concern and let my parents handle it. We could all have been murdered where we stood/lay but I wasn’t going to miss a minute of sleep. I am that dedicated to my rest. <nods sagely>

How ‘bout you? What sleepy-time hi-jinx do you get up to? And furthermore, can you remember them after you wake up?