Of the many races of Maldene, the sea-going amongst them are the Thirdocians. A stocky Human race born for the sea, by the time their young are old enough to leave the village they are already worthy seamen. The best sailors on the planet, a Thirdoaian ship is the first choice for crossing the storm-ridden …
Tag: story
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Character Talk- Eldar
An elf with a devil-may-care attitude, he will go into battle cracking wise, and gets a kick he more dangerous something is. In fact, a couple of novels in I finally had to invent a native Maldene word that would translate as “Hutzpa” specifically to describe Eldar. After all, how many people d you know …
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Places on Maldene: The Harbor of the World
The world of Maldene is a varied one, with a full range of terrain, magical places, and mysteries. That said, I thought I’d give a sneak-peak into some of that variety. One of the major ports of trade is the Harbor Of The World. Picture something the size of the Gulf of Mexico with the …
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Character Talk- Sabu
One of the main characters, Sabu is the young wizard who’s mind is nearly always lost in his own intellectualizations. Where others see a cloud drifting by and fanciful patterns, he will be calculating the wind patterns that made it that way. He can calmly calculate the trajectory of a spell required to vanquish an …
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What Makes Maldene Different?
So, with a plethora of fantasy and SF titles out there, what makes Maldene so unique? That would be the question that I love to answer. To put it simply, Maldene is a complete world, and so will feel as real to the reader as if Earth itself. Start with the basics. The map is …
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Combining Fantasy and Science Fiction in Your Writing
Most genre stories are either Fantasy, with wizards and magic swords, or Science Fiction, with space ships and ray guns. Very rarely do you ever find something that combines both, and even then it’s usually done very badly. The old “I got my wand and he has his ray gun” approach. So, how is one …
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Maldene Extras
Okay, so time for more hints, but this time it’s something you can download. If you go to the downloads page you’ll see a few things. While the map in the book is good, the one you can download has a lot higher resolution. The entire world (you could wrap it around a globe), with …
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Thinking Up Alien Names
Fantasy and Science Fiction have something in common when it comes to names; they gotta sound unearthly. Something from another culture unknown to this Earth or any of its languages. But how to come up with them? There are numerous ways, and often the best is to just start slapping syllables together and see what …
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Mark’s 10 (11) Tips For Story Writing
I finally found the file I’d created from whence I got these tips from, so rather than piecemeal them, here’s the whole list at once. Then in later posts I’ll get into some specifics for fantasy and SF worlds. These are my 10 basic tips for writing a good story. Be it novel or short …
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Writing Tip: World Building
Okay, so I stopped numbering them already. Moving on, this tip is for those writers of Fantasy and SF in need of designing their own world. Where to start? You have some ideas but which way to go? A step at a time, and the first step is simple. Break out some graph paper, 10 …
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