Blog Special Part 1: Building Your Fantasy World: Languages
Do you really have to create a new, working language like the master Mr. Tolkien himself did? No you don’t. The use of language can range from mere interchange here and there, to an actual working language college students can major in (like Klingon, for example!). But what if you’re not interested in creating a fully-working language? What if you only want to add a language for the sake of enhancing the culture you’re creating? That’s absolutely fine. No matter what you decide, you must keep a log book recording language pattern. No matter the extent of your new language, there are principles you must abide by. I’ll break these principles down, but for now, let’s discuss why language is considered a fundamental building block to world building. Earth itself has over 6,500 spoken languages in use today. The most popular language in the world is Mandarin Chinese. There’s roughly 1,213,000,000 people in the world that speak it. Each language found on this planet is a unique and extraordinary representation of its people’s history. And there inlays the point: language represents history. Language is the only form of ancient history that is still very much alive. English, for instance, adopts and combines the speech pattern, grammar, meaning, and pronunciation of almost ten different languages! Those languages being Old English, Danish, Norse, French, Latin, Greek, Chinese, Hindi, Japanese, and Spanish. The first speakers of the English language were tribes that lived in present-day Denmark. Both the Angles and the Normans contributed to the development of the English language because they invaded England. Imagine that? War influenced the evolution of a language. English is...Blog Post Special Part 2: My 30 Day Hike Across the UK
Listen to this post on my Podcast! March 7th 2016 Day one in London and the Cotswolds, Southwest England We arrived at Heathrow International airport on Virgin Airlines painfully early Monday morning. The flight was perhaps the smoothest ride I’ve ever traveled via plane, six hours in total. As we landed, I remember spotting the giant ferris wheel made popular by the Sherlock opening credits, and that was when it hit me: we’re actually in England! In the first article of this blog post special, I discussed the ridiculously awesome opportunity I had to travel to England, Scotland, and Ireland for an entire month with my family. During that time, I visited the homes of the Greats like Shakespeare, the Bronte sisters, Charles Dickens, Robert Burns, and more. Walking across the very land that inspired their writing and learning how their famous works of fiction came to life, truly motivated me as a writer. I was fascinated with their lives and how the the land they lived in inspired unforgettable classics we as readers still hold dear today. I began to view the world with a romance I thought I had lost, and my writing blossomed as a result. I kept a daily journal during my journey. I didn’t want to forget a single memory made, but really, the fire inside me was raging, and as Charlotte Bronte once put it so perfectly, “I’m just going to write because I cannot help it”. With that determination in mind, each day was a new and exciting challenge. My eyes scoured the sites with the excited energy of a vacuum “hoovering” up any minuscule detail it could devour (wow, my choice in metaphor. Thanks England). I found that...Interacting with Indie Authors: Proper Etiquette vs. Poor Decorum
Listen to this post on my Podcast! Dinner Party. Social Gathering. Business Interaction. Day-to-Day Driving. What do all these things have in common? Etiquette. For every single one of these occasions, there is a range of decorum that is expected of others and of yourself. The range will differ according to the occasion, but the goal is the same: show respect and maintain dignity. So how does proper etiquette play into the life of an indie author and/or a blogger? How does a subscriber, a reader, a reviewer play into this decorum too? There seems to be an unspoken forfeiture of etiquette when people deal with other people online. It’s as if the decorum we’ve practiced at work, with our family, with our friends, is somehow thrown out the window when we take to our computers. For most indie authors, this is the main form of interaction we experience, business or otherwise. And it seems like many folks don’t know how to properly treat indie authors or bloggers. They don’t know that there’s a proper etiquette to follow when dealing with us, too. So let’s take a moment to clear the air and refresh the standard. Understand Our Lives: I’d say indie authors are normal people, but we’re not. We’re total oddities, in fact. We take on an incredibly challenging passion which requires total devotion from our heart, our time, our sanity. We hear voices in our heads- characters– telling us what they want to do with their lives at odd hours when we should be sleeping. We bury our noses in any book we can get our hands on instead of partying with friends. (Friends? What are f-r-i-e-n-d-s?) We...Blog Post Special Part 1: My 30 Day Hike Across the UK
Listen to this post on my Podcast! I couldn’t help it. These writers put into words precisely what I felt as I experienced England, Scotland, and Ireland. Their masterful words fully encompass the 30-day trek I took across the UK with my husband and my in-laws. This was the trip of a lifetime, and I understand fully now why the world’s most incredible writers come from the UK. England is a snow globe. A thick layer of tradition, charm, and culture encases the little island like preserving glass from the rest of the world. Inside, both quaint and regal enchantments flicker like glitter and celebrated history drowns the land like a blizzard of ornamental snow. If it were shaken up, the glitter and snow would simply fly about faster and England wouldn’t be flustered one bit. In fact, I’m certain some folks in England aren’t aware that anything exists outside of the lush, endless emerald hills and rows of humble cottages. And I’m incredibly glad for them. As far as I’m concerned, absolutely nothing better exists outside the world of wellies, three o’clock tea, and clotted cream. Oh, clotted cream. Death by clotted cream is my death of choice. Scotland is Narnia England’s border to Scotland is much like an unassuming wardrobe. You see the beauty and majesty that is England and you think that’s where the charm ends. Inside, it’s nothing but empty storage for fur coats, right? Well as we traveled nearly six hours over the border into Scotland, I found that we had stumbled into a fairytale land practically unchanged since the time of its creation. It was as if I had tripped, face first, into a world...I’m Rae Elliott: Author, Blogger, Geek
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