Results of Ruminations

One of the things I enjoy the most about fantasy writing is the chance to make new worlds. Maybe, if I'm feeling like cribbing from The Tempest  (which I almost always am), I could call them "brave new worlds". But I've bumped into a surprising experience over the last three or so years: I'm stuck in one world. Stuck is probably too strong of a term, because that implies that I'm not content being there. On the contrary: It's been quite a bit of fun. Originally, I wanted Taralys (this new planet) to be a particular way and I focused on fusing the genres of science fiction and fantasy. Then, I had an idea for how to make a Jacobean/Elizabethan fantasy world in my own version of late 16th century London. The fact that I could easily rationalize how this new city fit into Taralys was a new thing for me. I already had a bunch of rules from my sci-fi/fantasy romp that I could apply to this new Elizabethan wannabe section of the world. They could be on the sam...

For many years, I resisted the urge to write science fiction. I've been a fantasy person for a really long time. While I took a sabbatical from it during my middle school days, I have been a fantasy reader for about as long as I can remember. Anne McCaffery's Dragonriders of Pern  was a formative series: I started reading it in elementary school. An argument can be made that the Pern series is firmly science fiction/fantasy (genetically modified dragons on a planet colonized by interstellar human beings that fly around on teleporting, fire-breathing animals), much of the stories take place in the fantastical world of Pern, rather than the other quadrants of McCaffery's shared universe. I'd even go so far as to say the first fantasy that I remember reading was The Prydain Chronicles by Lloyd Alexander, which I began with Mr. Soto in the 6th grade. I read all of those books (feeling as though Taran Wanderer  was a bit unfocused and that The High King  deserved its Newbe...