Creating Fictional Cultures In sci-fi and fantasy a large part of the experience is how different races behave and interact. Some speak with accents, others wear exotic clothes and have different religions. When creating alien races one must know them culturally. My universe has several starfaring species. The oldest and most advanced, dragons, are creatures of science and logic. They choose isolationism rather than engaging with other species but also act as protectors of the universe. The human alliance formed when all humans of different countries united to protect against alien invasion. They are the most recent to learn interstellar travel and less advanced than other great empires. Human society consists of cultural salads in large cities as the population of Earth is much greater in the future. There are ads everywhere and a lot of alcohol use in such crowed areas. Each country has its own culture but all are un...
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Name Ideas I've been working a lot on the outline for my sequel and that's coming along well. When I exercise I'll think about scenes and characters for it. I've also pondered names for my first book. The working title was 'Signature Rainbows Wane' but that didn't have enough description that it's a sci-fi book. I looked over some other book titles and remembered 'The Chronicles of Amber'- equally poetic yet it gets across the nature of the series. Taking inspiration from this my title will be 'The Signature Chronicles Rainbows Wane'. This does a much better job advertising the content. Just for fun, here's a photo of an Abert's Squirrel.
Choosing A Name For Your Book I've been doing a lot of research on marketing my upcoming book and it starts right there on the front cover. For the longest time the working title for my book has been Rainbows Wane. But how marketable is that? Would people pick it up who were interested in sci-fi? I don't think so. Of course I'd have to change my blog and web domain too. It's a lot of work so I need to be sure. The best way to do that is some research; asking people! That's the next step. The book was called Rainbows Wane because in it god was split into several beings by an alien force; like light being refracted by a prism. It's fitting and poetic but not from a marketing standpoint. This will require a lot of thought. I'll keep you posted.
Planning A Book I've been doing a lot to plan the sequel to my book while waiting for people to read my first one for impressions. I always think of it in scenes and organize them in an outline. That way I can come up with interesting ideas, locations and scenarios and add them where they best fit. When I'm walking or hiking, which I try to do 2 miles a day, I'll think about my book. Signature Rainbows Wane's outline was over 15 pages long. I figured out a lot of what works or not through writing and did 2 rewrites before the final product. With the sequel, Signature Ghate, I hope to have learned from the first and plan better. Many of the ideas that couldn't fit in RW can be applied to Ghate. So far I have five pages of planning. Ghate btw, is sort of like purgatory; it's the place souls go when transitioning from one life to the next. The story will revolve around the villain spinning a web through it in attempt to find hi...
What Will the Future Look Like? Although not a requirement, most science fiction takes place in the future. As a sci-fi writer, a large portion of what I do is based around my envisioning of the future. My novel takes place in the year 2324. So why 2324? The year is a very important part of defining how the future will look. If you start too close to the current year you'll end up with situations like George Orwell's 1984, a dystopian social science fiction novel who's time is already long past. I wouldn't want to write a book that can easily be disproved in a few decades. A couple hundred years in the future sets a good time frame; there's a lot of time for technology and our pioneering of the universe to grow but it's not long enough that everything will change. We'll still have Earth and some semblance of modern technology. After that's been established we decide the mood. In the same time frame a dystopian future w...
Genetic Mutations When you think of foxes you generally think of a red color. But foxes can be several different colors and even change color from season to season. Arctic foxes for example are brown or grey in the spring time and turn white when winter comes. It's a form of seasonal adaptation. Mutations can change a fox's color too. Red foxes can become a silver or black color. These mutations are a result of melanistic color morphs. Melanin is a process that makes a fox’s natural fur color darker through a genetic mutation. It is the absence of light coloring, this is due to a dark-colored pigment called melanin that develops in the skin and hair. Around 10% of wild red foxes have melanistic morphs. I was lucky enough to get photos of a black fox in the wild, although the quality was unfortunately poor. At first I thought it was a skunk but, upon looking at my photos, it turned out to be a...