A third map

The capital city of Lyria is a city called Fennica. I'm well aware that a lot of my place names end with an 'a'. Something to iron out. Anyway, it can be found here and it is intricate to say the least. I owe quite a lot to a program I downloaded from this site and it was initially a pain to use. Once I played with it a bit and modified the results through Photoshop I had a very serviceable map. I'm not going to be adding more to it until I've written something, as I didn't want to tie myself down just yet, but I think the time has come to write something for definite, even if it's just character profiles. Expect something this evening or tomorrow morning.

Bookwise, I've recently finished The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes on the Kindle. It's pretty good; some of what I'd consider to be the lesser-known stories simply because the enormously popular ones are the ones that get rolled out time and time again. It was very enjoyable and some of the amazing feats of deduction were very interesting to read. It's a little disappointing, in some ways, that some of the deductions are truly impossible for the reader to follow; I enjoy a story where I can try and work out what's going on in my own head before the story gets there, or at least make an educated guess. A lot of the Holmes stories seem to rely on the smudge of black ink on the thumb of the man who came to call three days ago that we just didn't know about. Very enjoyable though, and free!

New World

I've decided to start planning a new world to set stories in. It's going to be called Ehrian, and it's already fairly-well formed in my head. Made up of five countries, Ehrian is basically circular with an enormous tree in the middle. You can see the map of Ehrian here and I have to say I'm quite proud of that map. It took me a good six hours to do in Photoshop basically from scratch while watching episodes of Flashforward. That was two days ago.

Yesterday I decided to make a second map, using the first as a template, and here is the result: Lyria, one of the five countries of Ehrian. It's got a capital, Fennica, and it's going to be the setting for a story I'm tentatively calling Poisonroot. More when I have more, as it were.

100 Themes 025 - Trouble Lurking

Ok, so I had this idea and then decided to fit it around one of the 100 themes. I don't know if the result's any better, but it certainly gave the piece a little bit of structure. The tone's different too; negative theme, so negative tone.

On other news, I lost all the planning I did for this year's NaNoWriMo or National Novel Writing Month. I will still be taking part, though. My ideas must not have been that good, as I've not had an urge to rewrite either of them... still, I like the peacock riders idea. Might work on that.

I'm reading a textbook at the moment, and therefore am in no mood to review a book :D So, here's another 100 theme. Interestingly, I got up early and wrote this before 7.30 in the morning! Rarity for me, if you know what I'm like. I'm usually dead to the world before then, and after then too.


 I had this idea after someone said the word 'satisfactory' and they were complaining about how it only just sounded 'good'. As a teacher, 'satisfactory' is ok, 'good' is better and the best is 'outstanding' when it comes to being marked on our performance. The alternative is 'unsatisfactory'. But it's still a harsh word.

Anyway, this guy works in the SatisFactory. Makes you wonder what the UnSatisFactory working conditions are like, huh?

100 Themes 024 - No Time

Cards on the table-time; this is the first thinking I've done on a long piece of fiction I'm thinking of writing. Something a bit more dramatic than previous things, and better-planned. A family drama, I think it's called; three brothers, two sons, one crown, that sort of tagline. That's not bad, actually. Let me just write that down...

Anyway, there's going to be lions and peacocks being ridden, and bits in the first person, bits in third; it'll be a blast.

Oh, and I've been practising writing in the first person :D

100 Themes 023 - Cat

Now then. I've just got a cat with my darling wife Susan, and I could have written a smushy thing about him. Pfft.

This one is a play on a few things. The picture they're talking about exists; I don't really like it, and Sue does. I have one she doesn't like, so we hang them both, or neither. Fair, see? The smells Cat likes, I like, but she's not me; I just wanted to have a character that liked some of the same things I liked so that I could write about liking them. Selfish, yes.
This isn't based on any reality; Sue and I were never at Uni together, I don't know anyone that's done anything like this... it's just a nice thing based on a few real things. One or two truths in a big pack of lies, I guess. I've been told to 'write what I know'; this has some things I know in it.

100 Themes 022 - Mother Nature

I make no bones about this; Mother Nature, or Mrs Henson, owes a lot to Stephen King for her existence. I recently finished watching The Stand again, something I encountered in my early teens as a four-part serial, then read. Mother Abagail (I believe that's how it's spelt) is a wonderful voice in my head, a deep South bible bashin' ol' black woman, she won't take no nonsense but if you think you gon' put one over her you got another thing comin'. And so on.

I hope she comes across. There's a certain amount of Day of the Triffids in there too.

Oh, and while I think about it; this represents the start of something. Wonder if you can spot it :D

100 Themes 021 - Vacation

I... don't deal well with enforced relaxation. In fact, I hate it. That's why my writing output goes down when the holidays are on. As a teacher, it's hard to get around the Summer holidays. How Erik feels in this is pretty much spot-on.

Erik von Nesslinger was a character created for a forum RPG a while ago. I recently toyed with resurrecting him but, thinking about it, he's fucking whack; I mean, he's Sean Connery in my head, with a sniping crossbow; what fun is that? The physics of that alone is impossible, the idea that you could have a crossbow that was accurate over a long enough distance to make sniping possible. Unless someone wishes to correct me, Erik will never see the light of day (and now I feel like a kidnapper with a hostage).