R.M. Archer

Here’s the second post: A Guide to Blogging for the Fiction Author

Ooh! This is so exciting! I’ve always thought it would be super cool for you to start blogging!

I love your introductory post. It’s beautifully honest. ^-^

I do have a couple blog posts that discuss how to get started blogging. They got eaten by the forum, so let’s see if it’ll let me post them one at a time.

Answering Your Blog Questions

I’d…[Read more]

@godlyfantasy21 This is a cool idea! ^-^

@melancholic-writer

Cool! I agree; it can be really cool to step back in time with fantasy. 🙂

That’s an interesting take on the story!

Hi there! I’m Ariel (or Archer), and I also hang out around Story Embers!

I’ll add a couple of questions to Kathleen’s:

1. What’s your favorite element of your fantasy world?

2. What’s the defining feature of your Cinderella retelling, as opposed to other retellings (if you can share without spoilers)?

Welcome to KP!

@ribbonash

I’m glad the conversation was a blessing!

Thank you! I really appreciate that. ^-^

Exactly.

I think I would agree with that. It can definitely be helpful to consider age when deciding what to include or not, what tone to go with or avoid, etc. as you’re thinking through a new idea.

I can see younger teens avoiding the YA section.…[Read more]

@joy-caroline

Awesome! I’m glad it was helpful. 🙂

@joy-caroline

I think that can still work as YA. Based on my personal experience, though, you might have an easier time getting older teens to read about characters in a variety of ages than getting younger teens to read it. When I was a younger teen, I was much more into reading about teenagers, and it was only as I got older and more mature…[Read more]

@ribbonash

It sounds like you have a good understanding of where lines need to be drawn in your own fiction! That’s an important understanding to have, and I’m glad you’re holding to that. 🙂

I was actually thinking about Calligraphy Guild (among other things) for parts of this conversation. XD The primary main character and her love interest…[Read more]

@ribbonash

No, I actually completely agree with you on content levels. That’s something I’m quite passionate about; explicit adult content (of any level of description; I do think such topics can be alluded to for edifying ends) should not be put in the YA section. It’s a stumbling block and it’s inappropriate. But I don’t think that more mature…[Read more]

I’m going to disagree with this point, actually. I think that 1) if your characters carry through a series that begins with them at a certain age, your readers will follow them through that and may even go through that growth with the characters. Take Harry Potter, for example. I’m not a fan of HP, personally, but plenty of kids “grew up with”…[Read more]

Basically what @elfwing said. If there’s more story to be told than can reasonably be done in one book, it ought to be a series. I had one planned standalone that ended up turning into a duology because a whole additional plot showed up, as a background thing in the first book but begging to be the focal point of a sequel

I’ve had other series…[Read more]

@godlyfantasy12 Thanks for the heads-up! Could I get a link to your post? ^-^

@kathleenramm

A sphinx. For all the same reasons. Plus, they speak in riddles, which would exercise my brain on a routine basis and potentially help me come up with more creative phrases to replace cliches because I could practice giving unexpected but accurate answers to said riddles. Plus, sphinxes are underappreciated and I like…[Read more]

3/3: And once you have a map image, Map to Globe is super cool! (Assuming your world is a globe.) And definitely helpful if you want to see where things are in relation to one another in 3D.

2/3: I also have a whole Pinterest board of posts related to fantasy cartography, if you want to poke through it.

@godlyfantasy12

The forum ate my post. Let me see if I can split it into pieces so I only have one link per post…

1/3: I have a blog post about different methods for getting a map. Inkarnate is mentioned; I also give a few tips for hand-drawing maps.

From a project I work on sometimes when I’m bored but have no intention of ever doing anything with:

River stepped into her room and hastily drew the locks, only releasing a sigh of relief after she’d done so.

@elfwing Seeing them combined was super fun!

@joy-caroline Those are definitely similar enough!

I plan on writing all of my fantasy/sci-fi/dystopian/post-apocalyptic stuff under the same pen name, because it’s all fantastical speculative fiction and I have the same recurring themes and focuses throughout (worldview, family, community, etc.). Plus, all of my worlds are connected in some way…[Read more]