Worldbuilding: Life, Death, and Rituals

So how do your world’s cultures handle life and death? And when I say rituals, I don’t just mean the kind of formal recognition of christenings and funerals. (Though those are more important to tying a society together than most people realize, and ought to show up in fiction more.)

I mean, what does the family involved, and the community around them, customarily do?

Worldbuilding: Yi qi and Otherwise

Okay, so. Dinosaurs. And fossils in general. Great inspiration for the weird and varied ways life has actually existed on Earth in the past, and thus a source of info for building more plausible monsters.

…Mostly plausible.

A Spice of Life

Some days you look at everything currently cooked and uncooked in the fridge and feel like, “Everything in here is fine, but I’ve eaten the same combos too many days in a row. Normally that wouldn’t bother me but the past few days have been stress and I want something… very slightly different.”

Nonstandard Vampires

You know, if you plumb the lore on vampires, you come up with some interesting abilities that they can have. Most of which Hollywood either ignores or never really exploits. Well, this story plans to poke a few of them.

Lee Cheong knows these wrecks are a trap. He’s taken steps….

Earring Tales: Krystallos

Wow, it’s taken a few weeks to scrape together the spare time for these….

Worldbuilding: Down the Hold

In case anyone’s interested, the Serenity is physically larger than but has a bit less cargo capacity than a fair-sized junk from the Yuan Dynasty.

…Yes, this is important. Especially for writers.

Thoughts on Isekai Survival

One of the tropes that shows up often in isekai is that as soon as the protagonist finds friendly people, even if (especially if) they look nothing like him, he stops moving for a while, and starts building connections with people and the local culture.

A Note on AI Art and Petitions

Okay, I’m not any kind of visual artist, but I need book covers like any other writer and there is an impressive brew-ha-ha going on amongst artists about AI art and how its datasets use other people’s art without their permission, or even knowledge. Meaning the copyright of any such art produced should be legally murky.

Short Stray Thought on Isekai

Yesterday was cold and exhausting,  so… a couple stray thoughts.

Mary’s living in an isekai, a la Death March or any slice-of-life style. Bad Things may happen at the start of the story, but afterwards….

Introducing Master Yaow

So. I now have the Callers’ barracks tomcat. Here’s a bit of Lee Cheong and the cat who saved his life….