Some Notes on Draconia

These are a few things to know about the world Misfit Magic is set in before you dive in. Well, to be honest, you can likely get away with not knowing any of this, but maybe it adds a little colour.

Draconia is about 2% smaller than the Earth and it’s average distance from its star (a G2V, just like our Sun) is 0.93AU. It has one moon, which is tide-locked to the planet (like ours) so that you always see the same face, but that moon takes 12 days to orbit Draconia.

The 12-day lunar cycle is reflected in a 12-month year of 328 days. Most months are 27 days, except for the three summer months and the last month of the year, which have 28 days. Weeks are seven days long (because there are seven colours of dragons). Days are 24 hours in length (actually; I did the maths).

As far as seasons go, Draconia diverges from Earth in a couple of ways. Earth has quite a pronounced axial tilt and a fairly circular orbit. This means that our seasons are largely governed by our axial tilt: summer when our hemisphere has longer days, winter when they are shorter. Draconia has, basically, the same seasons in both hemispheres because its orbital eccentricity dominates. The average surface temperature in summer is 52.6C/126.6F, while in winter this falls to 6.9C/44.4F. The axial tilt is also smaller than Earth’s and faces ‘the other way.’ Winter days in the northern hemisphere are longer than summer days, but the differences are smaller overall.

There are two (known) major continents and one fairly large island on the planet. In the north is Frostfall, noted for having a number of fairly tall mountains and a region of permafrost up around the pole. In the south is Greenland, a continent largely composed of savannah, forest, and jungle. Greenland tends to get more extremes of weather since the axial tilt adds to the effect of the orbital eccentricity. Between Frostfall and Greenland lies Concordance, and on Concordance is Concord City, which is where our story will unfold. Concordance is an island about 620 miles east-west and 510 miles north-south. It’s just north of the equator, which makes for a fairly equitable climate, though it can get pretty hot in summer.

Concordance used to be the home of one of the royal dragon families until the Majesty War almost 1000 years ago. Following that war, the other families decided that they needed to settle their differences without (too much) bloodshed, and since they had wiped out the rulers of the island, they would make the newly renamed Concordance the place to meet and discuss problems. Concord City was created specifically as a meeting place and the island’s government is more or less democratic since none of the families wanted any of the others owning the place. Thus Concordance has a fairly liberal legal system, fairly just taxes, actual representation for all dragons on the ruling counsel, etc.

Under the True Freedom For Women Act of 634, all bra manufacturing on Concordance was made punishable by hanging and all female dragons under the age of 600 were banned from wearing bras. After 600, scaffolding was made a state medical benefit. The legal system is that good.

One of the paragraphs above is a joke. Which one is left as an exercise to the reader. I’m trying to do a map of the planet, though you won’t really need it for this book. Fantasy worlds are supposed to have maps. If I can get the software to do what I tell it to do.

Additional: I was asked for the days and month names. This is copied straight from my OneNote reference.

Weekdays: Royalday, Indigoday, Redday, Blueday, Greenday, Yellowday, Silverday.

Months

  • Snowfall, 27 days.
  • Springate, 27 days.
  • Planting, 27 days.
  • Newling, 27 days.
  • Summergate, 28 days.
  • Midsummer, 28 days. Leap years add an extra day.
  • Highsummer, 28 days.
  • Autumngate, 27 days.
  • Harvest, 27 days.
  • Autumn, 27 days.
  • Wintergate, 27 days.
  • Midwinter, 28 days. Leap years add an extra day during the midwinter festival.

Misfits Character Art

I’ve put some of the character concept artwork I did for the Misfits books up on ArtStation. Later today I should be doing a post about the setting (yet another attempt to provide useful information for readers) and the book itself should appear either late tonight or early tomorrow. I’m going through it one last time to check some dates I had to alter at the last minute.

You can find the pictures here.

But here’s one as a preview.

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Celestia Help Me! I’m a Brony

Weird things happen when you watch YouTube’s recommended videos. And I blame Weird Al. Back when I used to play World of Warcraft I found this WoW video animation of his ‘Hardware Store’ song. (If you’re unaware of this ditty, go look it up on YouTube: it’s worth it just for the verbal gymnastics.) Recently, for whatever reason, the YouTube algorithm threw me a different Hardware Store animation, built out of clips for My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. Now, I’m old enough to remember when the MLP franchise started and it was very girly, but the clips made it look amusing and buck it if Netflix don’t have the first five seasons on stream…

So, I ended up binge-watching six seasons of MLP:FIM (I found the sixth to stream on Amazon), and four Equestria Girls films, and I’ve been smirking at the fandom-produced stuff on YouTube, DeviantArt, and a fanfic site… I’d hang my head in shame, but bronies are supposed to stand up proud. Whatever, I’m hooked. For a while anyway.

Now, the reason for this admission is that all this uplifting pony stuff percolating through my somewhat aberrant brain provoked an idea. The idea became a plot. The plot has become a book. I think I posted something saying I had a weird idea and I wasn’t sure it would work. Well, this is it and it’ll be out sometime next week. For those worried I’ve gone totally off the rails, there will be no ponies (in fact, the world in question doesn’t have any equines due to divergent evolution), but it does have dragons. A lot of dragons, though they aren’t exactly big scaled lizards most of the time… I should just let you read about it.

The new book is called Misfit Magic. It’s fantasy, obviously, set in a world with a weird mix of technologies and a fair bit of magic. It’s more traditional fantasy than urban fantasy, and I have no idea what categories I’m going to stuff it into for retail purposes, but Teen Fiction will not be one of them. And I have a cover which is quite bright for once…cover-book1-amazon

Oh, yeah, and it’s set in a girls’ school for magic. Oh… I have to write cover blurb for this… What was I thinking?!

Anyway, I’m looking at releasing this on the 5th or 6th of May, depending upon when I can get through the final edits, and when I can come up with a reasonable cover blurb. And I repeat: no ponies.

Question and Notes

I did something with The Zanari Inheritance I don’t normally do: I included some notes about calendars and weird words at the back. If you didn’t notice them (no pun intended), take a look.

Was it helpful? What I’m writing at the moment has a load of weird stuff in it and I’m wondering whether explanatory notes is actually useful to the reader.

PS. I’m saying as little as possible about what I’m currently writing because… Well, it may not pan out, and it is a bit strange. If it’s working, I will give out more information earlier than I did with The Zanari Inheritance.

Children of Zanar Character Designs

Over on ArtStation, I’ve put up several images from my catalogue of character design studies for The Zanari Inheritance.

Find them here: https://tharcion.artstation.com/projects/oKK64

And, just for you guys, this is a desktop-sized wallpaper of the female characters:

female-crew-desktop

 

The Zanari Inheritance

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The new book is out. The Zanari Inheritance is available on Smashwords now and Amazon soon. Apple iBooks, B&N, etc will follow when they’ve done their vetting thing.

Sorry to have been a bit silent about this one coming, but the last few weeks have been… interesting, and busy. I’ll post some more about this book and series in the near future, but in the meantime, I hope you enjoy it.

Valentine’s Day 2017

Well, in a couple of hours it will be that day beloved of sweethearts, lovers, florists, greeting-card manufacturers, and chocolate companies. That time of the year which takes being single and turns it from mildly depressing to a full on atomic wedgie.

Yes, Valentine’s Day!

I felt like making my general opinion of the event known.

Continue reading

Progress, or the Lack Thereof

Okay, I’ve finally had to admit to myself that I’m totally blocked on the Thaumatology book. With my house a building site and my concentration shot, I shouldn’t be expecting miracles, but I’m grinding in ever decreasing circles here and it’s time I stepped back and came at this from another angle at a later date. Basically, I’m delaying that book and trying something else to get myself back in the right frame of mind. Apologies to those hanging there waiting for more Ceri and Lily. I am, however, planning to do a full reissue of the Thaumatology series with the typos taken out and new covers, plus (assuming I can manage it) an omnibus collection which won’t be much use to most of you guys, but may bring in some new people who’ll press me for more.

So, I’ve started working on something else which I’m not going to say much about right now. I’m trying to put it out in the slot I was going to use for the Thaumatology book, likely in March. All I will give you is the render below. Make of that what you will.

thea-pinup1

New Thaumatology Models

I think I mentioned some new character models for the Thaumatology characters. I’ve posted them up on ArtStation and since we’re dealing with nudity and adult content and all that jazz, I’ll just provide a link here. NSFW, folks. You have been warned. 🙂

What Comes Next: Science Fiction

Over in another thread, Mark Delagasse brought up something which is worth making more of and I need to start thinking about this ahead of time, so here we go in my usual rambling style…

Aneka Jansen. The first Aneka book, The Steel Beneath The Skin, holds a place in my heart for the very simple reason that it was my first really successful novel. Seven books later, however, Aneka is getting hard to write for and her story is going to come to an end (at least as far as me being able to write for her) in the foreseeable future. I need something to take her place.

I originally thought that Fox Meridian was going to be the new Aneka, and for some people I suspect she fits the bill. However, I’m guessing she’s not for everyone. Mark, for example, likes Aneka, but would prefer a bit less ‘skin,’ so I’d have thought Fox would work, but he didn’t mention her. Fox is pretty much a near-future setting while Aneka pushes more into space opera. Fox is kind of low-key while Aneka is based around the big stuff. Lots to consider and not so much idea what people are looking for.

So, if I’m looking for a new universe to take up the torch when Aneka is sent off to a pleasant retirement, what should I be aiming at? What is it that attracted people to Aneka in the first place? Let’s see if I can structure this a little…

  • Subgenre. More or less ultra-tech (scientifically implausible stuff like force fields, anti-gravity, artificial gravity, FTL), bigger or smaller themes. More space opera or more hard SF?
  • The kick-ass heroine. I have had comments that it was nice to see a guy on the protagonist list in Vampire’s Kiss, so while I am likely to have a female lead, I am not averse to developing a strong male character too. What about Aneka and her friends did people like?
  • Did people like the specific setting? If so, what about it?
  • This has to be mentioned: sex. There’s a lot of sex in the Aneka books. I’ve been reducing it in more recent stuff (not entirely intentionally, it just works that way sometimes). Tone it down? Keep it the same? All-out porn?
  • The last element I can think of here is the connectivity to our world. Aneka’s story starts off with no one even knowing where Earth is. There’s no sense of connected history from us, here, now, to the world of the stories. Stuff gets filled in later, but this is an entirely new universe when we start (like Dune or Star Wars rather than Star Trek). Is that good, bad, or really not an issue? Is the ‘discovering a new universe’ a factor in the enjoyment of the books?

Okay… Well, your thoughts would be greatly appreciated. The more the merrier and I’ll try to coalesce the undoubtedly huge range of answers into something I can work with. This should be interesting… (Just like the curse.)