Episode #339: We Be World Building 2.026 {3}

I have seemed to hit the mother load of deer encounters in the past calendar month, as this pic was part of a group of seven (plus video) that I took on one of my twice daily walks back in late July. He/she were approx 150 feet away from me when I took the pics, happily munching away on the greenery that you see in the foreground. I believe the encounter lasted about three minutes or so, before I thanked them and took my leave.

Read part one here, part two here.

The first thing we needed to do was to build a society that was not only both regressive and progressive at the same time, but also had both feet entrenched in the old way of doing things (traveling by horse) and the new way of doing things (telepathy, sentients and computers, etc).

Step one: we immediately pitched the idea of a foreign country and changed it to being a planet in another galaxy system. This was done because I had used a tunnel (think wormhole from Star Trek) early on as a method of transportation.

Step two {a}-Progressive: based on my knowledge of world history, we turned the Pod Planet (as it was now called, again based on my early novella) into a strictly matriarchal line of succession.

Step two {b}-Regressive: again drawing on my knowledge of world history, the Queen had no real power, as a select group of men pulled the strings, like a puppeteer who controlled a marionette. Also, sex was crassly weaponized, in that if you perform this humiliating duty, you will receive a nominal increase in power.

Step three {a}-modern society: the kingdom implemented/used the latest technology, e.g. computers, video surveillance, and the latest in modern medicine.

Step three {b}-old fashioned society: the main mode of transportation was horse flesh; the population had the look and feel of an agrarian society at the beginning of the industrial revolution, yet was not.

One way you can look at step three, is as a rudimentary steampunk theme, with a mixture of modern and old fashioned elements being shown as societal norms.

Now with the next few societal steps, you really can't pigeonhole them strictly into the progressive/regressive categories, you have to be more flexible in your thinking.

For example, I had to create a brand new language for the Pod Planet, because you can't have the denizens of another planet simply speaking English. So I created one that sounded like a mix of a clicky-clack toy, a bicycle bell, and a toot whistle.

But I did add a few twists, one of which was that all citizens must be conversationally proficient in Pod and I also made the planet bilingual. Another that I had added in, which I took inspiration from all the regional dialects here in the US, was different dialects of the Pod language that were not based on where you live, but on what your class status was.

to be continued

{c} 2026 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #338: We Be World Building 2.026 {2}

The malevolent squirrels in restful response, during our brief cease fire earlier this year.

Read part one here.

Now if there's one thing that you should know about me, at least as a writer, is I do not like to plan anything at all, if it can be avoided. And let me tell you, I avoid planning/outlining my stories like it was a dirty piece of cutlery.

I think this abject hatred of outlining anything stems back to my high school days, where I had an English composition class and the teacher always wanted what she would call "details" to an essay, but would never elaborate on just exactly what they were. So I did my best and garnered a few flags (as Fs' were called back then). Ultimately, I barely passed that required class but never did figure out what she meant by "details", even 45 years later.

Back to the story.

This story, based on the character I was writing and the story idea I was executing, was going to need more than the drib-drabbling I was doing previously. It was going to need a world of some kind.

As I said previously, I knew of the concept called 'world building'. and have seen it executed very well throughout all kinds of fantasy and sci-fi genres. But with me being mostly a pantster with just a hint of planning in my veins (for my previous novels I would print out a previous chapter so that I wouldn't ever too far off course), this was going to be uncharted territory for me.

However, I did make a promise to myself early on, which was to meet every challenge head on and rise to the occasion, and world building was definitely out of my comfort zone by an urban mile.

Now I did have a sparse outline of an idea on what kind of world I needed to build, which was based on two characters that were introduced early on in the novella: a country with a monarchy based society and a Queen at the apex.

Now to be perfectly honest, I have no genuine idea as to why I originally chose to have a Queen as a ruler, but I would like to think it was keeping in the same structural viewpoint of doing things differently just for the sake of doing things differently.

Speaking of doing things differently, I'm from a generation where reading and learning about other cultures was actually a normal thing to pursue, and just because things are a certain way now, doesn't mean they were always that way.

to be continued

{c} 2026 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #337: We Be World Building 2.026 {1)

We all like flowers in the wild, as they be harbingers of a brighter today and a buoyant tomorrow. 

Blogging note: This particular topic was one that I had previously touched upon in great detail back in 2024 (see tag "Hot Mess" for similar posts), but I thought I would revisit this from a different viewpoint.

I understood the concept of world building early on, mostly as a reader, so I had no problem in reading stories that had a meticulously created background for them. I also understood it as a writer too, although I didn't make too much of an attempt at creating brand new worlds beyond writing stories where certain concepts were already presented as a given.

In other words, whatever oddity I had introduced into a given story, say a character with a tail and some fur or one that collected souls, it was treated as an everyday normal occurrence. I think, at least to the best of my recollection, I did this because I wanted to treat anything out of the ordinary as a simple and ordinary occurrence.

For about a decade, I was quite happy to sprinkle a little of not normal people/concepts into normal situations, and treat those things as normal. A slice of insanity dropped into a very sane world, if you will.

Fast forward to May/June 2022. This is when my mercurial muse decided that their life needed a bit of chaos thrown into the mix. They knocked on my chamber door to my brain and said, "You need to do something out of your comfort zone, and I'm going to help you do it."

I answered with some trepidation. "And what might that be?"

"World building! Doesn't that sound like fun!"

"Nooooo!"

Reality check: Fast forward to May/June 2022. I had made the conscious decision that I would tackle my next project by composing the entire thing by hand (hence the first month listed), then transcribe it to the computer (hence the second month). That next project was, by process of elimination, this fantasy series.

Now I knew early on that the dribs and drabs I was presently doing with my stories simply was not going to pass muster, with this series. Although at the time, turning this story into a series was the furthest thing from my mind.

To refresh everyone's memory: this story originally started as a mediocre novella that was ultimately shelved in the 2010s with about five chapters written (I think). When I had decided to make it one of my post-retirement projects, it became the first one to start off as 100% handwritten.

It quickly blew up, and from that novella sprang forth five full length novels that ultimately required a brand new world built from scratch in order to make it believable.

And here is where the fun and the stress of creating a whole new world(s) rears its beautiful (fun) and fugly (stress) head for the next three years.

to be continued

{c} 2026 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #336: We Be Booking It To Our Bookshelf {1}

I found myself at my local library's used media store the other day, debating on what type of media I should purchase to add to my growing movie and c.d. collection, and I wasn't what one could say, having any luck. The pickings were quite slime in the DVD selections, and I wasn't really interested in the new age/modern country/classical that were currently populating the music section.

So I turned my attention to the possibility of beefing up my stagnant book collection. I say "stagnant" because my last dozen selections were striking out at a torrid pace that would match my New York Mets.*

*As of the day of this post, the Mets are fifteen games under five hundred, deep in the bowels of the NL East basement. So....yeah.

So my wandering eye starts wandering around the book section to see if anything that not only could catch my fancy, but it would be a topic I would actually be curious about. My eye eventually did settle on a book that caught my fancy, but the topic itself was one that I've either read about or listened to enough times to not pique my curiosity.

Now, I don't know if you do something similar, but when I come across as person/event that has been overcooked to a charcoaled goodness, I have a tendency not to sample that charcoaled goodness, no matter how tempting it may seem to be.

Let me give you a few examples. I listen to a fantastic true crime podcast called Small Town Dicks. Hosted by Yeardley Smith (The Simpsons), it covers criminal cases that are off the proverbial beaten path. I highly recommend it.

This year, they ran a three part episode on the OKC Bombing as told by one of the lead investigators. Sounds interesting, but I heard/read enough about the bombing to last me a lifetime. This summer they're running a ten part series on the Golden State Killer, as told by one of the co-hosts who helped track him down. Again, it's sure to be really good, but that particular crime wasn't my cup of tea to begin with.

So back to our potential back selection:

The book was about Buffalo Bill & His Wild West Show. Nothing really remarkable there, as I've read a lot about Buffalo Bill. However, upon closer examination, the full title was something that I did not know much about.

"Buffalo Bill's British Wild West"

I knew he toured internationally with his show, but this was the first book that I've come across that covered part of his international tour, which in this case covered the years of 1887-1904 in the UK. Naturally I was quite intrigued, to the point where I decided to open my wallet and gladly pay the $3 price tag.

I perused through a few pages, just to see what I was getting myself into, and the other thing that caught my attention, was that the book was 100% made in the UK. From the publishing press to the copyright info, the personal bio to the price tag and everything in between, it was all British. It was also a second edition too.

Upon closer examination, I could see that this was a well researched book. So this was going to be a pleasure to read, since as of late my non-fiction used book reads have been a major bust (like Brian Bosworth realm of football busts). About the only fault I could find with it was the size of the font, which is too small*. But as they say, it's a me problem.

*Imagine a 240+ page book in the font size equivalent of this entire note, that's what I mean by 'too small'.

In general, it takes a lot to pique my curiosity about a well covered event or person in time. It takes even more to actually have me revisit a well covered topic due to a different approach being used. See this post about doing just that with a well known criminal event.

In summation, this book piqued my curiosity to the point where I was happy to purchase this book to help my local public library fund vast extracurricular activities for the town and beyond.

Have a fantastic Monday and safe and slightly sane week.

{c} 2026 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved