Sunday, February 27, 2022

#WIPChat #WorldBuilding Tips and Tricks





 I am reviving the old #WIPChat Series I did on Twitter a few years ago. 

I made #Worldbuilding into a three part video series on my Youtube Channel PenumbraMine Writing. 

PenumbraMine Writing with M.M. Ward


#WIPChat #Worldbuilding Part 1 Question 1 : Where do you start building your world? A character, a place, or a scene? White Room Syndrome refers to writing that lacks grounding in physical reality. It is simply a stream of consciousness that lacks basic descriptions of scene settings, the five senses, and the world environment. The story might as well be taking place in a white room. Question 2: How far do you go when world building? Maps, customs, religions, local color, weather? Worldbuilding can be overwhelming so Start Simple. Write a tour guide brochure. A quick guide to the highlights of the world you are writing in. FYI: The WIP world is the total universe of a WIP; all the places and all the things. A Scene is the action event or what is happening in a specific setting. The Setting is the “local” place or environment or where an action or interaction or event is happening; it can be a room, a building, a place. What is around your character? Question 3: How much research do you do and what resources to you use? Down the rabbit hole or “this is enough, I’d visit there.”? Five simple Worldbuilding things just for you the writer to start with: 1. Where is your character mostly? Work? School? Home? 2. Describe how that place look, smell, feel to the Character. 3. Describe the climate and landscape around the place 4. Describe what the Character wears, eats, drinks... 5. What do they do, think, fear, dream? Question 4: What do you hate most about world building? Question 5 : What do you love most about world building? Question 6: So, you are writing along in your amazing new world and there’s an earthquake. How do you deal with world-building caused plot holes? Do not let the worldbuilding plotholes become a dam across your river of creativity and turn into Wri Writing the Tree https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmAhyCofirA&t=22s



Part 2: They, the people and Culture 101… A quick look at Who are you, who, who… Question 7 : When you meet your characters, do you know them or get to know them? Do you create a set of personalities traits? Do they have obsessions, phobias, insecurities, quirks? Question 8 : Is your world going to have a one base culture or many cultures overlapping and interacting? Question 9: How many forms of religions or spiritual beliefs do they have? Do they pray, meditate, make sacrifices or give offerings? Is it required or voluntary? Question 10: Religious or civil holidays: How do they party? And how do different groups feel about these things? Question 11: Every culture as something it sees as “normal” that can be shocking to outsiders. This gives a world a depth. What are your Cultural quirks and taboos? Question 12 How do your families, clans, classes, sects, ranks, etc. interact and relate? Do they help each other or pull rank on each other? Do royals and commoners/interact in positive or negative? Are there those who resent or are trying to change how people interact? Question 13: Languages and Colloquialisms: “Ya gotta have slang man… y’all cain’t go without cursin’ or prayin’ or just sayin’, don’t ya know?”




#WIPChat #Worldbuilding Part 3 The How and What of The Environment, Magic, and Technology of Hard and Soft Systems Question 14 If you are writing a sci fi, do you use Hard or Soft Technology System? What can your world’s technology do? Question 15 Are there groups with more or less tech? Are there biases against Tech or those without it? Question 16 If you are writing fantasy, do you use Hard or Soft Magic Systems? What are the rules and consequences of Magic? Question 17 Are their groups with more or less magic? Are there biases against Magic or those without it? Are there enchanted items or magical creatures in your world? Question 18 Hard Mapping or Fluid world - How is your world laid out in the micro and macro? Do you make a map? Or do you explore as you go? Question 19 How detailed so you make world layout? Variety of landscapes? Towns or cities? Home, churches, government, or business buildings? Do you have Ships or Airships or Spaceships? Question 20 Community planning is always a thing when building a world with different terrains. Are you communities separated or united based on environment and terrain, or class? How many different jobs do the places in your world require? Question 21 How does the climate and terrain, or natural and unnatural disasters affect your characters and story plot? A/N: I noticed on the replay I forgot to say Arborea's drought was caused by weather manipulation technology hence it being an unnatural disaster. World Anvil https://www.worldanvil.com/ Intro/outro music Music: Elektronomia - Collide Watch: https://youtu.be/bWGhAfN9PAs Stream: https://spoti.fi/3nZ4A3y



Saturday, February 12, 2022

Launch and Sneak Peek: Blue Water, Pagosa Stars #2 in the Pagosa Cliffs Series.

 

YAY LAUNCH DAY!!!

Blue Water

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09SB1LQRL/

Olympic diver Camille Wallace and her sister Willamina learn the ‘truth about the love and devotion of the Hightower men’ only two nights before Willamina’s wedding through their cloud account shared with Mina’s fiancĂ©, and 328 images of a bachelor party featuring their doppelgangers ‘entertaining’ Kent and Kyle. Tragedy followed.

Fifteen years later, can Camille and Kyle clear the water between them and start over, or is Ice Cold Coach Wally too stubborn to forgive? Did those pictures justify the secret Camille kept and what it costed Kyle?

They say, “A picture is worth a thousand words,” but what if those words were based on a lie told by a desperate brother beholding to a murderous gangster? How can two people overcome heartache when the last decade and a half of suffering were pointless?


Sneak Peek! 

Chapter 1

 Sometimes the happiest dreams lead to the most heartbreaking moments.

 


 

Two years after the Summer Olympics...

 

Willamina Wallace paced in her bathroom, it was 11:30 at night and she had woken up from a wonderful dream, driven to an all-night pharmacy, and rushed home. Her sister’s phone went to voicemail, so she dialed it again and again until Camille answered.

“Somebody better be dead, sis. I have a seven to seven at the call center tomorrow,” Camille grumbled.

“I had a dream... an amazing dream. I think I’m pregnant with twins, I can’t wait to tell Kent!” Willamina burst out excitedly, then giggled as she heard her sister fall out of bed.

“Wait, what? Start over. Did you see a doctor about this? When did you find out you were pregnant?” Camille scrambled up off the floor.

Mina laughed. “Calm down, Hurricane Camille. I told you, silly, I had a dream, and I saw twin divers competing. They looked just like us except they had Kent’s blue eyes and dark hair. They were so pretty and so graceful. I was so happy watching them dive.”

“Mina, have you even taken a pregnancy test?” Camille demanded tiredly.

“I am waiting on one now, Cami. Don’t be so grumpy. You need to accept when Kyle asks you to marry him, so we can be sisters and sisters-in-law and have our babies at the same time.”

“I told you, Mina. It was a one-time thing; it won’t happen again.”

“Don’t you mean two-time thing that won’t happen again and again?” Mina giggled because she could practically hear her sister blushing as Cami stammered in denial while she interrupted, “He really likes you. He asks Kent about you all the time. Kent says Kyle hasn’t looked at a girl since Sophia, and honestly, Kent and Kris were worried he had switched teams or decided to become a monk or something and was afraid to tell them before Cancun.”

“He hasn’t switched teams, trust me. But I just don’t know if I can trust him, I mean what if he’s a player like Kris or worse, what if he… is like Ron,” Camille almost whispered the last three words.

Mina got quiet for a moment, “You gotta let it go, Cami, they all went to jail for what they did to you and Violet. They won’t get out for a long time. It’s time to take a chance on a guy who worships you. He’s...”

“I am not having this conversation with you again,” Cami said in a dead voice.

“Well, too bad! I have your wedding planned already. I got twenty more seconds and I don’t want my sister to end up a spinster! If you could get married and pregnant right away, then we could have our own synchronized swim team,” Mina

 snickered, “And we could call them the blue butterfly-ettes.”

“Have you been drinking? Cause that’s bad for the baby,” Cami snarked.

“Babies! I dreamed it was twins,” Mina reminded.

“Just read the damn test,” Cami begged.

“Okay, two lines but one is kinda fuzzy... Is that a yes or a no?” Mina was giggling as she turned the test around trying to figure out if it was two lines.

“Oh my gosh, send me a picture,” she insisted, almost screaming out her happiness at the thought of being an aunt.

Cami was grateful her job gave her a three-phone plan with unlimited sharing and automatic cloud storage. A perk she shared with her sister and her sister’s fiancĂ© Kent, who, unlike his younger brother, was trying to make his way through graduate architecture school without relying on the family money.

Cami facepalmed as she heard the call drop. Her sister was the worst with technology. If Mina was pregnant, Cami decided she was calling in tomorrow to go baby shopping. She waited and waited, but the picture didn’t come. Groaning, she got up and went to her laptop. If Mina took the picture before her phone died, it would be on their cloud account. Her fingers flew over the keys. Leaving it as her slow internet loaded, she made cocoa while she tried to call her sister’s phone.

Finally, Cami dialed the landline, “Your phone’s dead again, isn’t it? Willow tree, you gotta plug it in every day.” A strange, muffled noise sounded like sobbing. Cami had a momentary panic. “Sis, what’s wrong? Willamina, talk to me, are you hurt? Do I need to call 9-1-1?”

“I... I logged into the cloud to email you the picture and... And Kent is...” More sobbing made the rest of her words unintelligible.

Cami rushed back to her computer and choked on her own heart as it broke. Falling and shattering her arm poolside had been painful, but not as painful as what she was seeing on her laptop. Cami instantly regretted letting herself fall in love with Kyle Hightower when she knew his youngest brother Kris’s reputation for being a player on campus. Her sister was sobbing about Kent wouldn’t do this to her, but the images were of the Hightower brothers, the men they loved, at a topless club, being ‘attended to’ by several women, two of whom looked remarkably like the sisters. The shock wore off as it was replaced by an icy cold rage, a blizzard formed in Camille’s heart.

“That son of a... I... how could he? Oh, I’ll kill him! Both of them! I’ll cut them into bait. I’ll drop them in the Gulf for the blue crabs,” Cami ranted, biting off the urge to spew profanities because her aunt had raised her with the strict manners that ladies didn’t cuss.

Another set of images populated, and Mina choked out, “Oh Gawd, I think... I... I’m going to be sick.”

The anguished voice of her sister’s misery dragged Camille back from the high of her rage. “Mina, log off. Log off now. It’s not good for the baby for you to be so stressed. I want you to go to the Ridgeline and stay with Beau and Gramma and Grandpa. I’ll handle the wedding cancel.” Nothing happened so Cami snapped at her, “Willamina Grace Wallace, I said log off! I can still see your icon. Look, sis, we’ve seen enough, we know the truth. You need to think about the baby.”

Camille watched her sister’s icon go offline, while she listened to Mina sob about how Kent wasn’t like Kris; he had never once gone to a place like that. Kent and his older brother, Kyle, had promised them both it was just going to be cards and cigars and a few shows for the bachelor party, not strippers.

“Right... shows,” Cami thought bitterly.

More images appeared every few minutes. Cami felt sick as she noticed the girl who looked remarkably like Mina giving Kent a lap dance. He was staring at her with glazed adoring eyes as his hands roamed all over her. Over his shoulder, she could see Kyle with a woman who had a blue butterfly painted on her abdomen between her breast and her navel and knew the woman was supposed to be her doppelganger as Cami unconsciously crossed her arms over the tattoo that rested between her breasts.

In her memories, Kyle seemed so sincere in his attention and Cami believed in his affection and honesty. Believed it enough that he was the first man she had willingly given herself to. They texted and called for two months. At the rehearsal dinner, she longed for the practice wedding to be over, so she could be in his arms. She wore a stretch velvet dress that showed off her curves and her cleavage, but most of all, her butterfly tattoo. Neither slept that night, and he kissed her tenderly before taking a cab back to his hotel. It was the last time she saw him before he flew out with his brothers for Kent’s bachelor party. Cami shook herself, loathing that she had ever let him touch her tattoo. Seeing they hired strippers to pretend to be her and her sister for the bachelor party made her want to vomit. Enraged, she sent Kyle a text message.

‘We can see you boys.’

Two images later, she watched him looking at his phone. In the next image, he was back cupping the breast of the stripper who looked like her. She forced herself to focus on her crying, emotional sister.

“Mina honey, you need to go to sleep. You’re pregnant and the baby will need for you to be rested.”

“Cami, what am I going to do?” her sister’s voice wavered pitifully.

“You are not going to worry; I have over half a million in sponsor money put back. I’ve never touched it. We don’t need the Hightowers or their money. We don’t need anything from them, you and me, just like it has been since mom and dad died,” Camille tried to sound calm and strong, but inside she was shattering as an image of Kyle with his face buried in the stripper’s cleavage popped up.

“You and me and baby makes three?” Mina asked timidly, quoting a nursery rhyme.

“That’s right, willow tree, only now we’re gonna have to find you a new nickname; you won’t be stick-thin anymore,” Cam tried to make light as her soul hemorrhaged.

“What are they doing now?” Mina whispered in a tiny voice.

Cami couldn’t lie to her sister. She never lied to anyone. She didn’t have that particular ability because her eyes or face gave her away. She couldn’t lie over the phone to her sister because her voice would give her away. “They are still getting lap dances and booby facials.”

Mina choked on a sob, “I’m going to take a shower and go to bed. Don’t watch anymore, Cami. Just... It’s better... better that it’s before the wedding.”

“I am sending you a ticket to Colorado, just print it out, and take a taxi to the airport. I’ll have Beau pick you up. He is supposed to be flying out tomorrow afternoon with Gramma and Grandpa anyway. I’ll… I’ll take care of them and the wedding cancel… I love you, Willamina.”

“I love you, Camille. Don’t do anything too crazy with your hurricane temper. Don’t hurt them,” Mina begged. Their grandfather always said Camille’s temper was as bad as the hurricane she was named after.

“Fine, I won’t harm a hair on their heads, I promise,” Cami vowed, “I’ll just show them that a picture is worth a thousand words, and I am really good with words.”

After her sister hung up, Cami stayed online to make sure Mina didn’t log back in as she blamed herself for her sister’s entanglement with the middle Hightower brother.

A slip poolside during training less than a year after her bronze medals left her with a broken arm, concussion, and unable to dive for months so she got a job at a cellphone carrier call center to pay her bills. When she finally got through rehab, she had missed the Nationals and the Olympic tryouts. It was a crushing blow to her spirit and dreams. It would be another semester before she could try to get her spot back, so she was studying oceanography, biology, and teaching swimming and water exercise classes at the Houston YMCA. The three days a week she didn’t have classes, she worked at the call center. It was a job she hated but it gave her extra cash while she was in school. Her sister started dating Kent while Cami was in the hospital and soon it was love. Kent was a nice guy but driven to succeed, and so good for her sister; he was the rushing river to her calm willow tree. They were the only perfect couple Camille had ever seen besides their grandparents in Colorado. Fairytales didn’t happen anymore, but Mina and Kent seemed like the one-in-a-million and in two days, they were supposed to be having a grand wedding suitable for their love story, but that fairytale was over now. Cami had hundreds of pictures of the truth of the love and devotion Kent promised to give only her sister; the same happily ever after Kyle had promised Cami just two nights ago.

Watching the pictures appearing, she saw that Kent’s bachelor party went way beyond a few lap dances and by 4 AM Central Time in Texas, everything Cami had felt for Kyle was as cold as the water in Antarctica. She called their cousin to leave a voice mail about the change of plans.

It was 3 AM Mountain Time, but Beau answered on the third ring, “Cami? Are you okay?”

“I’m sorry I woke you. The wedding is off. Kent cheated on Mina, log onto the family cloud account, but don’t show Grandpa or Gramma.”

In moments, she got the response she was expecting. Beau was more like a big brother than a cousin. They spent a year together on their grandfather’s ranch in Colorado after both sets of their parents died in a small plane crash. Then Mina and Cami went to Texas to live with their mother’s much older sister so they could continue diving.

“I will kill him! I will feed him to the bears!” Beau raged. He had always been overprotective of the quieter, gentler Willamina. It sounded like his fist was pounding on the bedside table.

“Easy Beau, Mina is flying out to Durango tomorrow; I emailed you a copy of her itinerary. I am putting her on a plane outta here while I deal with this mess. The Hightowers screwed over the wrong set of sisters,” Camille declared coldly.

“I’ll be there, tell her I’ll be there.”

“There’s one more thing, scroll back to midnight to the last thing Mina uploaded.” Cami held the phone away from her ear and waited for him to see the pregnancy test.

“I will feed him alive! To! The! Coyotes!” Beau roared, then ranted, “Oh Kent is so dead! I liked him but now... Wait, is that Kyle too? Those… those…”

“I know, Beau, but please let me handle this. Sis needs you to be strong for her till I can get there. I love you, big bear.”

“I love you too, cliff jumper. But I swear, if they set foot on our ranch, gawd in heaven won’t be able to find their bodies,” Beau vowed vehemently.

“I know and I’ll help you bury them, but right now, we gotta focus on Mina and the baby.” Cami swallowed hard, remembering Mina’s broken sobs.

“Be as vicious as you can, you make them pay, Cami, humiliate them and I’ll keep sis safe.” He hung up without saying goodbye. Beau was funny that way, he never said goodbye.

She texted Mina that Beau would get her on the other end of her flight. An immediate ’thanks’ had Cami worrying about her sister getting enough rest. Somehow, she knew Mina spent the night lying awake and crying, just like she had. It was a sister thing, a twin thing, even though they weren’t twins in the traditional way. Camille and Willamina were Irish twins; sisters who were born only eleven months apart. Cami knew what her sister was thinking as the sun lightened the horizon and texted her.

‘He’s not worth it. Get some rest before you call the taxi.’

Mina didn’t respond.


Friday, February 11, 2022

Book Sale to Celebrate "Blue Water" Launch

 $0.99 BOOK SALE!

To celebrate tomorrow's launch of Blue Water, Pagosa Stars #2, Editingle has put all my stories on Sale for Valentine's Day!



It's Everything I've written for them. I am so excited because Michealle, Rusha, and Catherine of Editingle Indie House Publishing have done so much to help and encourage me on my writing journey.

Red Velvet and Anemones #1- After her sister's sudden death and the discovery of Marni's betrayal, newly divorced Cake Artist Milli Haywood leave Vegas with her newborn niece, but can she learn to forgive and become better or will life leave her bitter? https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08CF33YGH/
The Wild Anemone #2- Settling down in Pagosa Cliffs, Milli opens her dream bakery but gossip, prejudices, and the past put her hopes and her life at risk. Will she have the courage to keep moving forward? https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09M7NRPSF/






Snowflakes and Winter Dreams Anthology with the exclusive Pagosa Cliffs short, A Winter Rescue by a Christmas Widow, featuring a cameo by everyone's favorite Sheriff Tank Tanner.


The Hallow Halloween Anthology Trilogy https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08RZ2Q5F3






I will also be including Tarnished Stars, Pagosa Stars #1 in the sale.


Thomas 'Tank' Tanner had it all as an NFL Pro-bowl star but it only took one wrong friend and one wrong tackle to cost him everything he ever loved. Now, he's back on his Pappy's ranch in Pagosa County, working and trying to put away the whiskey bottle he picked up on his way to rock bottom. Can he resist the lure of amber over ice and jumping down the rabbit hole boots first?

For all my other books, here's my author pages


My Inkitt page where all my drafts are free for those who can't afford Kindle. https://www.inkitt.com/penumbramine/

Be Blessed and Happy Reading.