Category: Writing

Worldbuilding Wednesday 12/4/24: Tolkien’s Wizards

Since I just finished watching The Rings of Power on Amazon, and am also reading Tolkien’s compilation The Fall of Numenor, I’ve a mind to talk about Tolkien’s Wizards. First off, there weren’t that many of them. There are only three as characters in the main trilogy: Gandalf the Grey, Saruman the White, and Radagast …

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Worldbuilding Wednesday 11/27/24: Haughty, Horrible, and Hilarious Hs

H, to me, is a letter with an old-fashioned vibe similar to E — a Victorian feel, honorable as well as haughty, but with touch of horror, like Charles Addams’ old New Yorker series of Addams family cartoons, the creepy family of which obviously came from old money. But H can also be hip and …

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The Last Closet: The Dark Side of Avalon [Review]

The Last Closet: The Dark Side of Avalon by Moira Greyland Castalia House, 2018 The Last Closet: The Dark Side of Avalon is the book that grew out of the 2014 revelation that fantasy and science fiction and fantasy author Marion Zimmer Bradley abused her own children and knowingly protected and facilitated her husband Walter …

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Worldbuilding Wednesday 11/20/24: Dog Magic

Since I’ve been doing dog breeds for the past two weeks, how about Dog Magic? The first dog magic, of course, was the human domestication of dogs. From what I’ve read, the first dog was a now-extinct subspecies of wolf similar to the present-day Arabian Wolf, which roams the Middle East. In other words, a …

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Worldbuilding Wednesday 11/13/24: Toy Dog Breeds, Part 2

More Toy Dog breeds.   Toy Dog Breeds Mostado-Michu Tricolor dog (white, black, brown – think beagle) with a strongly arched tail. It has drooping ears covered with soft, silky fur and its body fur is also soft to the touch, with no rough undercoat. Gentle and sensitive, they were prized by upper class townsfolk …

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Worldbuilding Wednesday 11/6/24: Toy Dog Breeds, Part 1

Toy Dogs are a show class of the American Kennel Club referencing small, cuddly canines whose chief job is human companionship. They can be of various breeds — spaniels and terriers for example —  or shrunk-down versions of larger dogs like poodles. The one thing they all have in common is their diminutive size, which …

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Worldbuilding Wednesday 10/30/24: Mummies

The 1930s and 1940s were a golden age for horror movies AND graphic design for horror movie posters. Look at the color, the composition,  the pleasing mix of typefaces in the poster above! It’s gorgeous. Which brings me to the subject of mummies. Mummies are part of the rarefied classic movie monster club that includes …

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Worldbuilding Wednesday 10/23/24: Horror Movie Antagonists

As it’s turning towards Halloween, I thought I’d do a post on second and third-tier horror movie antagonists. The human kind, not monsters. There are many versions of Dracula, The Wolfman, and Mummy and even more imitators. From the get-go, the Silent Movie era spawned Count Orlok (Nosferatu, 1922) an adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula …

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Fanfic Warning Labels

I was waiting for the right time to post this. Can be applied to non-fanfic writing as well.

Worldbuilding Wednesday 10/16/24: Birds of Prey

When the average person thinks of “birds of prey” or “raptors” eagles, hawks, and falcons come to mind. Owls are raptors too, despite their physical differences from these species. But there’s much more to this family — vultures, condors, buzzards, harriers, kites. I was surprised to discover in doing research for this post that there …

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