New Worlds: Types of God
The New Worlds Patreon tour of religion continues! Real-world polytheisms feature a dizzying array of gods, but many of them fall into certain recognizable categories. Comment over there!
Posts Tagged ‘new worlds’
New Worlds: Polytheism
Polytheism! It’s all over the place in fantasy, and frequently feels all too much like D&D. This week on the New Worlds Patreon, we talk about how polytheism actually works.
New Worlds: What Makes a God?
For the month of July, the New Worlds Patreon turns its attention back to religion — this time for a look at some of its underlying concepts. We begin with what makes a god . . . which is something that differs quite a bit depending on what religion you ask! Comment over there.
New Worlds: Childbirth
Given how dangerous childbirth was in history — and can still be even today — I sometimes marvel that the human species still exists. This week the New Worlds Patreon delves into the perils and practices of delivering a child, both past and present. Comment over there!
New Worlds: What to Expect When You’re Expecting
As the New Worlds Patreon proceeds through the topic of childbearing, we’ve finally arrived at the pregnancy stage of the process — or more to the point, all the cultural requirements and prohibitions surrounding that. Comment over there!
New Worlds: Birth Control
This week on the New Worlds Patreon, we’re talking about one of the great advances in human history: birth control. Comment over there!
New Worlds: It’s That Time of the Month
My patrons are awesome. No sooner do I put potentially “icky” subjects like sanitation or childbearing in the monthly topic polls than they vote for them — in this case with a much clearer majority than most of the polls get. Which is why this week’s New Worlds essay is about menstruation, and all the cultural baggage that surrounds it in various places and times. Comment over there!
New Worlds Theory Post: Cultural Spheres
As most of you probably know by now, one of the bonus funding goals for the New Worlds Patreon covers a fifth post in the months that have five Fridays. For these “theory posts,” I step away from the specifics of what goes into a world, and instead look at more abstract matters: either techniques of handling this stuff in writing, or anthropological concepts of use in worldbuilding. This month is one of the latter, with the idea of cultural spheres. Comment over there!
New Worlds: Let’s Go to the Zoo!
The tradition of keeping captive animals for display is an old one. This week, the New Worlds Patreon discusses zoos and menageries, past present, and future! Comment over there.
New Worlds: Fluffy and Fido and Friends
Do you have a dog? A cat? A bird? A tarantula? This week the New Worlds Patreon continues its exploration of the animals in our lives with a look at pets. Comment over there!
New Worlds: Working Animals
Our pets today have it easy: we rarely make them work for their kibble. This week, the New Worlds Patreon tackles the category of working animals! Comment over there.
New Worlds: Livestock
It’s onward to a new month with the New Worlds Patreon, which means a new topic: animals! Starting with livestock, and questions like “what is domestication” and “why have we domesticated these animals and not those.” Comment over there!
New Worlds: Banking
In the last essay for April, the New Worlds Patreon turns its attention to the world of banking! (Part of it, anyway — the investment side will have to wait for later.) Comment over there!
New Worlds: Taxation
This year we have an extension on filing our taxes, but the New Worlds Patreon is going to discuss taxation anyway: what we tax, how we pay, and how this can actually generate story. Comment over there!
New Worlds: Debt
They say love makes the world go round, but after writing this week’s essay for the New Worlds Patreon, I think it might actually be debt instead. Comment over there!
New Worlds, Year Three: now available in convenient ebook form!
You can tell I’ve been busy with writing Night Parade and copy-editing The Mask of Mirrors, because I completely forgot to mention here that New Worlds, Year Three was available for pre-order!
Well, now you can just go ahead and get it. As usual, it contains all the content from the third year of my Patreon — now revised and expanded — and you can get it from Book View Cafe (the publisher), Barnes and Noble (for Nook readers), Google Play, Kobo, and Amazon US or UK. (I don’t have it up on iTunes yet — I’ve been having some difficulties there — and for some reason Indigo isn’t carrying this one yet, though it has all my other BVC ebooks.)
A print edition will follow, but isn’t quite ready yet.
New Worlds: Before (and After) Money
I don’t know if it’s tax season that made the Topic Backers from the New Worlds Patreon vote for an economics theme this month — but voted they have, and so they shall receive! After all, that’s the trade we’ve agreed to. And certain kinds of trade are the subject of today’s essay: specifically, barter. Including how I previously said a wrong thing about it, and need to walk that statement back.
Comment over there!
about the Clarion West workshops
My apologies to everyone who wasn’t able to get into any of the free workshops Clarion West is offering. There was an initial delay, and then some technical difficulties that appear to mean people on certain browsers could see the registration links but others couldn’t, plus the overall demand was so high that courses filled up more or less instantaneously. I know a lot of people are disappointed.
The good news is, the CW staff are now aware of how much interest there is in this stuff, and are working to both set up future options and make sure it runs more smoothly next time. Apparently they were already intending to start offering more online options (since not everybody can travel in-person to their one-day workshops); the current situation just made them step up their timetable, is all. So if you weren’t able to register for the things that interested you, there will be more opportunities in the future — including my own workshops, because like CW, this is something I was thinking about doing anyway.
New Worlds: Evidence
The New Worlds Patreon wraps up this pass through legal topics with the question of evidence: what we accept as legally valid, what we don’t, why, and how that’s changed over time. Comment over there!
FREE Clarion workshops!
The Clarion West Writers’ Workshop is taking the extraordinary step of offering free online writing workshops for the next several weeks. (Extraordinary because they’re still paying the instructors, but not charging the students.) I had a splendid time teaching an in-person workshop for them last month, so I’m diving in to do a series of worldbuilding workshops inspired by the New Worlds Patreon. There will be four of them, each independent of the others, meaning that you only need to sign up for the one(s) that interest you. It’ll be first come, first served, with registration opening on Friday, March 27 at 12pm PST. The current list of workshops is here, so if any of them pique your interest, mark your calendars now!
