Hi lovelies! It gives me
great pleasure today to host Randy Ellefson and his new book, “Creating Places”! For other stops on his Goddess Fish
Promotions Book Tour, please click on the banner above or any of the images in
this post.
Be sure to make it to the
end of this post to enter to win an awesome Ultimate World Builder’s Package!! Also, come back daily to interact with Randy!
Thanks for stopping
by! Wishing you lots of luck in this
fabulous giveaway!
Creating Places
by Randy Ellefson
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GENRE: Non-Fiction
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BLURB:
Creating a unique, immersive setting one place at a time.
CREATING
PLACES (THE ART OF WORLD BUILDING, #2) is a detailed how-to guide on inventing
the heart of every imaginary world - places. It includes chapters on inventing
planets, moons, continents, mountains, forests, deserts, bodies of water,
sovereign powers, settlements, and interesting locales. Extensive, culled
research on each is provided to inform your world building decisions and
understand the impact on craft, story, and audience. You’ll also learn how and
when to create history and maps. Experts and beginners alike will benefit from
the free templates that make building worlds easier, quicker, and more fun.
Learn
the difference between types of monarchies, democracies, dictatorships and more
for realistic variety and believable conflict. Understand how latitude,
prevailing winds, and mountains affect climate, rainfall, and what types of
forests and deserts will exist in each location. Consistently calculate how
long it takes to travel by horse, wagon, sailing vessels, or even dragon over
different terrain types and conditions.
CREATING
PLACES is the second volume in THE ART OF WORLD BUILDING, the only multi-volume
series of its kind. Three times the length, depth, and breadth of other guides,
the series can help fantasy and science fiction creators determine how much to
build and why, how to use world building in your work, and whether the effort
to create places will reap rewards for you and your audience.
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EXCERPT THREE:
All
flying animals that are depicted as being ridable are imaginary. The likelihood
is that none of them would get off the ground with a rider, but there’s no fun
in that. We must take being realistic with a bigger grain of salt than normal.
This can suggest doing whatever we want, and we certainly can, but there are
often useful details and considerations that arise from trying to being
realistic anyway. And these serve to make our work more believable.
While
flying can generally be assumed to be done in a straight line, factors change
this. Mountains can be tall enough that they must be circumnavigated. Real
birds struggle to get over the Himalayas, for example, because the air is
thinner. Larger creatures like a dragon would suffer even more from this.
Dragons are often depicted as all powerful, but this is one way to make them
less formidable and realistic at once. The difficulty of climbing over tall
mountains is one reason, along with rain shadows, for characterizing any land
features we’ve created; in this case, we’ll decide which mountains ranges are
this tall (hint from chapter 4: the tallest peaks are in the interior of a
continent, not on its coast).
Hostile
territories can also change flight patterns, whether that hostility is other
animals or sentient beings like humans. Even dragons are preyed upon by other
dragons. A lone dragon might fear to fly through an area full of other dragons,
especially if the latter are territorial or of another kind hostile to its own
kind. If the dragon is unafraid, his rider might be more cautious.
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AUTHOR BIO:
Randy Ellefson has
written fantasy fiction since his teens and is an avid world builder, having
spent three decades creating Llurien, which has its own website. He has a
Bachelor’s of Music in classical guitar but has always been more of a rocker,
having released several albums and earned endorsements from music companies.
He’s a professional software developer and runs a consulting firm in the
Washington D.C. suburbs. He loves spending time with his son and daughter when
not writing, making music, or playing golf.
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CONNECT WITH
RANDY:
Website:
FREE ebook:
Facebook:
Twitter:
Google+:
Goodreads Author Page:
Goodreads Book Page:
Amazon Author Page:
Art of World Building Website:
Art of World Building Podcast:
The book series has a new podcast where
even more details are discussed. This podcast is free to listen! Follow along
here:
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BOOK BUY LINKS:
Amazon Kindle:
Amazon Paperback:
Barnes and Noble:
Books2Read:
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GIVEAWAY INFO:
Randy will be awarding an ultimate world
builder's package to a randomly drawn winner via KingSumo during the tour.
**This post contains affiliate links and if clicked and a
purchase made I may receive a small commission to help support this blog. This does not cost you anything, it just
helps pay for all those awesome giveaways on here.**
This contest is sponsored
by a third party. Fabulous and Brunette is a registered host of Goddess Fish
Promotions. Prizes are given away by the
sponsors and not Fabulous and Brunette. The featured author and Goddess Fish
Promotions are solely responsible for the giveaway prize.
Randy ~ It is great to have you here again! Congrats on your new book and good luck on the book tour! :)
ReplyDeleteThanks for hosting!
ReplyDeleteThanks Ally!
ReplyDelete