Natalie was one of the last fellow fantasy author’s I was lucky enough to meet before Twitter imploded. We face similar chronic illness challenges, but are still making steading progress bringing our fantasy books out into the world.
Tell us a bit about you. Where’s home and what’s your life like outside writing?
I currently live in West Yorkshire, UK but I was born and raised in Denmark. I moved to the UK to study some 7 years ago and somehow landed a job through volunteering and love it here too much to leave. Outside my 9-5 office job I spend most of my time writing or talking my adventure cat, Barry, on walks. Due to some ongoing health issues I don’t hike or do any martial arts at the moment but I hope I can return to these activities eventually as they give me a lot of joy and I certainly miss them.
What drew you to your genre/audience age?
Worlds different to our contemporary one have always been what drew me to reading fiction so it makes sense I mostly write fantasy, sci-fi and historical fiction. I love exploring the other and getting a break from modern life and nothing is more immersive than creating those new worlds yourself. While I enjoy reading everything from MG to adult, my voice and the themes I usually explore lend themselves best to adult audiences. I have dabbled in MG and YA but find it difficult not to become too whimsical when writing for younger audiences and I don’t enjoy having to mind the layers and themes I imbue a story with. So basically, I enjoy as much creative freedom as possible.
What are some big themes your writing explores?
I tend towards the dark side of mental health and the human experience. I enjoy scrutinising humanity’s faults and weaknesses. Sometimes this means my main characters are very morally grey and stepping on the fine lines between good or bad. Other times the main characters are the ones fighting a corrupt and (often) incorrigible society that tries to kick them back down when they’re straining to stay upright. Most of my main characters have poor mental health. Not only are they fighting an unfair system, they’re also fighting their own inner demons and these can prove a lot more difficult to get rid of or live with than the crooked government.
Found family and a sense of belonging are secondary but almost as strongly recurring themes. The sense of being lost and directionless, of not having a place to fit in, of being other and different to everyone around them. Their stories regularly revolve around finding ‘their place’ and ‘their people’.
What drives your point of view characters?
I think it usually boils down to finding happiness and a place to belong. Sometimes external forces trip them up but often they lay down booby traps in front of themselves, never even seeing the tripwires they need to dismantle in order to find that place of joy they’re searching for. They might know the end of the road they want to reach but can’t see what’s right before them. They’re also often fiercely protective of the people they call family – at least once they find those people.
How much do your point of view characters resemble or differ from you?
It varies between each character. I don’t purposely add something of myself as my main characters (and often most of the side characters too) appear in my mind like preformed people. Some will have one small thing – Merlon struggles with insomnia, Tara and Balfour with anxiety while Cali has my touch and noise sensitivity – others won’t really have much at all in common with me. Iolanthe believes slavery is fine and Torhildr thinks those who she judges unworthy deserve to be killed, obviously neither of those are things I would ever agree with. I do notice I have certain types of characters appear more often than others and this usually matches with my own personality. Most are depressed or anxious, many don’t like being the centre of attention and would be described as “reserved” or “quiet” if someone met them.
What influenced the settings they inhabit?
In my space fantasy series, Inner Universe, I have created a huge world with enough planets and galaxies I can take full advantage of all the travelling I have done. I have been extremely fortunate that I saved up enough (by working 3 jobs while studying) to move abroad, alone, at age 21 and from there on I worked in countries all around the globe. This means I have first hand experience with both Outback Australia and working outdoors during Canadian winter. I can pull on skills learned while doing martial arts and Viking reenactment when I write fight scenes and know what it’s like to forage your own food or live without electricity and running water for months at a time. I noticed a shift in my writing from before I had all those life experiences to after and definitely hope I’m not done raking up knowledge first-hand by going out there and doing the things most people only read about.
What do you gain from writing your books and what do you hope your readers will gain from them?
This ties back to the main themes in my stories: mental health and belonging. I suspect I’m autistic and have never truly fitted in anywhere. I struggle a lot with chronic depression and moderate anxiety but the one thing that consistently helps and keeps me afloat is writing characters who keep fighting even when they face much larger challenges than I (hopefully) ever will. It’s my hope that my stories don’t just bring catharsis and healing for myself but also for other people who find life difficult – because it’s really bloody hard sometimes and it can be nice to read about characters who aren’t so different to yourself.
Where can we find your books?
Author hand-stamped paperbacks and my free short stories are available on my website(https://nataliekelda.co.uk/shop) while ebooks of River in the Galaxy and Outer Universe can be found on Amazon and they are available through Kindle Unlimited as well.
Author bio
Storytelling and inventing new worlds has been a part of Natalie’s life since before she could read or write. Nowadays she mostly writes in English but you’ll often discover hints of her native Danish or some of the other languages she has picked up along the way.
Managing neurodiversity isn’t easy when you don’t have a diagnosis so didn’t know you were neurodiverse when you started developing strategies to manage it. But by the age of twenty I noticed that despite being an adult, there were things I did differently, or needed to do differently. Things most people seemed to find easy that I couldn’t do well, no matter how many times I had to do them or how much I knew.
Alongside the self discovery I blogged about in I think I’m Neurodiverse, I developed strategies to manage communication and organisation strategies, especially at work. In conversation with other’s who self diagnosed or were diagnosed as adults, I noticed habits that set my wellbeing and mental health in good stead. I share them here in the hopes it may help other neurodiverse (especially fellow ADHD) people and make us more understandable for neurotypical people.
Communication Strategies
Often I’ve been hyper-focusing on whatever I’m doing when a person walks up to me and asks a question. There’s a huge distance between the thing I’m super focused on and whatever they’re talking about. It takes time, and usually more contextual clues as to what they’re talking about to cross that distance. So when a boss or parent approaches at the end of my teaching day with a specific question… I cannot answer immediately.
Processing time isn’t my only difficulty. If I haven’t had time to draft my answer to your question in my head, I cannot look you in the eye, think what to say and say it. Usually the pressure of you standing there, expecting an immediate answer to what you assume is a simple question prevents me from thinking, even when I look away. So I need strategies to manage professional conversations in particular, because those are the ones I don’t want to present as vague, ignorant or otherwise unprofessional in.
Strategy Number 1: Clarify (and play for time)
I don’t just need additional context because I’m neurodiverse. I rarely speak to parents, so I have little knowledge of them and their concerns. Even as a neurotypical person I may not anticipate what they’re asking about. So when they finish talking, I try to summarise their main concern and confirm it by asking, “Is that your concern? Are you also wondering about x?” Or, “So you’d like to know about Y? Is there anything else you’d like to know about that?”
Summarising and asking clarifying questions helps me ensure I have perceived the person’s main message (I tend to clutch at side points when I’m put on the spot), and gives me time to process. Only then do I stand a chance of recalling my usual answer to that sort of question (as an experienced teacher I’m lucky to have a bank of these from past experience). It also gives me time and mental space to connect what they are saying with what I know about the topic, to form my answer.
Strategy 2:Play for Time
If I’m having a casual one on one conversation, especially start of the day ones with students where there’s no contextual clues of what they’re talking about, again, I need time to process. I usually seize on a single piece of what they said, and comment on it, encouraging them to elaborate. While they elaborate, I’m processing, connecting the trip to Sydney to visiting their grandparents and that being why the child is excited. This isn’t a one off for me. It happens in MANY conversations where I’m not given multiple contextual clues.
Note for neurotypical people: If you’re ever chatting to someone and you think the point the other person chose to comment on is random, or not your main point, don’t go feeling misunderstood: elaborate. Adults are so time poor these days that I feel like we often start our conversations in the middle. Even a busy neurotypical person may benefit from, “You know how I was visiting my grandmother because she was sick last week? Well it turns out…”
Strategy 3:Ask ‘Stupid’ Questions
Sometimes in the staff room a colleague asks another, “Did you get those times sorted?” In most contexts that means nothing to me. “Times for what?” No, it doesn’t matter that the last conversation I had with that person was about times. That conversation was two hours ago and my head is full of the teaching I did in between. I need to be asked, “Did you get the times for little Jimmy’s parent-teacher interview sorted?”
I’ve always thought it was magic how most of my colleagues can answer questions like that with zero context, when I mostly can’t. When people ask me questions at a time and about a thing or in a location I don’t expect it, I need at least three contextual clues to know what they’re on about. And because teachers spend most of our time working with students, and many of our conversations are rushed between preparing lessons, meetings, yard duty, paperwork etc; my colleagues rarely give me context. So I’m learning to respond to questions with: “Are you talking about x?”
Note for Neurotypicals: Hyper focus makes context a necessity for me. Hyper focus means my focus is on my world building my novel set in a roughly Bronze Age era, fantasy world. So if you’re asking me about real world, modern day politics in America, I’ll first assume you’re asking about Umarinaris politics during Ruarnon’s reign. Then I might realise you mean modern politics, but modern politics has dickheads in every country (and I’m in Australia, so I may or may not assume Australia first), so which modern country’s political dickheads are you referring to? Give me context!
Processing Strategies
Strategy 1: Go With the Flow
Many writers joke about how much they procrastinate. But when I wake up on a Saturday morning, spend two to three hours bouncing around on social media, then go for a walk (possibly a drive first): I’m not procrastinating. I’m letting my restless, highly distractible brain do its ping pong thing. That involves letting it bounce towards whatever interests it, in any order, forget things, bounce to the next, then circle back.
I let my brain go with its flow. Then I walk and do housework to exercise off the physical restlessness and calm my mind. On Saturday night I watch tv or read, or ease into writing with a blog (like I’m doing right now) or a newsletter. Then on Sunday: I’m ready to write or edit some chapters.
This is what I mean when I say ‘go with the flow’. My brain isn’t linear. It may not finish one thought before it rushes to the next, and the next. It may have two lines of thought simultaneously. At work I HAVE to slow down. Through sheer will and discipline developed over years, I try to explicitly teach a single line of thought, to make learning accessible to my students.
Throughout the Day
During the day I force myself to, as much as possible, get all my lesson structure timings right and work to the school timetable and bells. Once the kids go home, I let myself pack up and organise five different things at once. I forget the first, get distracted by the sixth, re-discover the first and so on. I’ve learned to keep looking around, and circling back each time I finish or get distracted from something, to see what else I’m still working on. Letting my brain go with its natural, chaotic flow when I’m tired takes a lot less effort than forcing myself to linearly do one thing at a time.
So with teaching and writing, I don’t fight or jam my brain into a neurotrypical mold. Wherever possible whilst actually getting things done, I let it march to the beat of its chaotic, erratic drum. Then I circle round to catch the things I got distracted from and forgot about before/ during completing them.
Strategy 2: To Do Lists
I laughed when people first mentioned these to me. What’s the point of a to do list? I lose the list LONG before I finish half the things on it. And I don’t remember to tick anything off, so I don’t experience the satisfaction of completing things, I just rush headlong into the next five. But editing the chaos of my novels and recalling the many jobs of different types juggled after hours in teaching was too much.
My new system is paper sticky notes. I don’t keep re-reading or ticking things off because that can get overwhelming and stressful. If I think I haven’t written something down, I just write it again and throw the notes in a pile so I don’t lose them. Once a week (there is a particular day where I have more time), I go over less urgent notes to do and cross their items off. Then I re-write the outstanding jobs in order of when they need to be done. That works for me.
For editing novels, instead of losing my edit notes, I type edit notes above each chapter in the draft. And I write notes that apply to the whole book before the first page, and re-read them periodically.
What Works For You?
For keeping track of things authoring and teaching, its been about listening to others, trialling things, identifying why things won’t work, figuring out what does, and being disciplined, stubborn, determined etc to plug the gaps. And this is a good time to shout that its about figuring out what works for you and why, or what makes things harder, or stresses you out and why. And from there: what could make life easier for you?
Ideally we all got diagnosed as kids and had loads of strategies by adulthood, but the 90’s, naughties and earlier let us down big time on that front, so here many women and nonbinary people are playing catch up. Good news though: its not too late to learn or to make your life easier!
Strategy 3: Ask For Help
I’m an impatient, adventurous but also a lone wolf type of person. I just want to dive in and get everything done fast (the best time for me to do anything was often yesterday, and sometimes last week. Failing that, its today 😉). Sometimes I move too quick and overlook things multiple times. A classic example is supermarkets, where I can walk up and down the same aisle four times and not notice the item I want. Not only do I ask a staff member to tell me which aisle, but even how far down, or between what or even to point directly to it. I tell them, “I’m sorry, I have visual processing issues and I can’t seem to spot that one thing amongst all the other stuff. Could you point to the shelf for me?” ‘Stupid question’ but it really helps.
My Mental Health Strategies
In conversation with others, I noticed how good luck and the benefits of other struggles in my life have positioned me well to manage my ADHD from a mental health perspective. People with ADHD are statistically more likely to struggle with depression and anxiety, but for most of my life I’ve dodged both. So it seems a good focus for the third section of this blog. (Apologies fellow neurodiverse people, likely nothing in this section is easy and a good chunk works well for me because my experiences and personality predispositions aligned well).
Strategy 1: Accept What I Cannot Do
I’m realising in conversations with people who are self diagnosing as late in life as I am that I’ve been very fortunate. Some people I know have been carefully masking, measuring themselves up against neurotypicals and berating themselves for not being able to function like neurotypicals their whole lives. I haven’t had that struggle.
When I was around twenty I remember thinking, I’m an adult now. I should be able to do things like navigate to some place I’ve never been and get there on time. I couldn’t. Remembering to leave time for traffic, find a car park, get from car to venue etc is boring. I’m restless, impatient and easily distracted. All I knew back then was I struggled (and still do sometimes) in the moment to recall and allow for ALL the factors that allow you to get somewhere unfamiliar on time.
And I thought: most people with at least half a brain find this easy. I have more than half a brain but find it virtually impossible. I don’t know why or if I will ever know. So rather than be upset about something I can’t change, I’m just going to accept that I randomly suck at some things for no apparent reason. I’ll accept it as one of my quirks, enjoy getting lost, not sweat about being late and laugh it off.
Strategy 2: Don’t Compare Myself to Others
This was probably easy because I’ve rarely ever measured myself against my peers. I don’t date, or have my own kids so there’s no point of comparison as a partner or parent. As a nonbinary person I never cared much about the type of ‘man’, or ‘woman’ I am. I’ve met few nonbinary people, all recently, and as an umbrella term for multiple genders its hard to compare yourself to another nonbinary person anyway, so I didn’t care how my gender and that part of my identity compared to anyone.
When it came to my brain working differently and me behaving or struggling to do certain things in certain situations, I figured that’s just my quirks. I’m unlike many people in many ways, and in these particular ways I suck at things others can do. I didn’t suck enough to not be capable of what I want to do in life, it just made many things I wanted to do (like being a teacher and writing novels) A LOT harder and made me look clumsy. So the only times I compared myself to others and masked my ADHD was when I worried it might raise questions about my competence at work (after I’d had years to settle in as a graduate teacher).
Strategy 3: Be Open About My Limitations At Work
I had no choice with this recently at work. The more boxes, colours and types of information a form collects, the more impossible I find it to perceive the whole form. Red hurts my eyes. White print on colour is hard to read correctly. And the more information jammed into more boxes, the more my brain shuts everything out to prevent being overloaded and doesn’t even realise it isn’t perceiving everything. I suspect this is a strategy my brain sub-consciously developed to minimise stress levels and help me avoid meltdowns.
The above became clear when I fell on my face doing a ridiculous amount of paperwork my colleagues found challenging but achievable that I found impossible earlier this year.
Whether or not your boss and colleagues believe you, understand you or appreciate the challenges you face at work makes a huge difference. I’ve been very lucky. And with understanding of my needs, I could develop strategies and work could put supports in place so that what was inaccessible to my neurodiverse brain became workable. (Though it was still exhausting -needlessly, because the organisation who produced the paperwork doesn’t understand how inaccessible they made it to people like me and don’t seem interested in learning.)
Strategy 4: Be Open About My Limitations At Home
Again, I’ve been lucky here. For my first three years in my own place I lived alone, as chaotically as I wanted while I figured everything out. By the time I moved into a sharehouse, I had a fair idea of how to organise cleaning and other things that could annoy my housemates.
I’ve been clear about systems that help me succeed with housemates. For eg. bills are printed and stuck to my fridge (the one my food is in) and we sign when we’ve paid our share. Because if our bills are shared digitally, the infinite distractions on the internet mean I’ll forget the bill exists each time I close the tab I saw it in. On the fridge there are no distractions and I see it each time I enter the kitchen, creating the eight or so opportunities I need to remember to actually pay. I move a device into the kitchen, so when I bounce between tabs and forget what I’m doing, my physical location reminds me to pay a bill.
One housemate circles the cost and writes what each of us owe on bills, so I don’t get lost sifting through too many words and miss important things, like how much to pay (the first five or so times I look, out of impatience and restlessness).
I’ve also mentioned that I’m a light sleeper with sensitive hearing, and headphones or background noise exacerbate the ringing in my ears. I ask my housemates not to shower after 11pm (my room is next to the bathroom) or be cooking and banging pots and pans at 1am (I’m also near the kitchen). My housemates are good with this.
Key Points for Neurotypicals
Give the person you’ve speaking to, especially if you’re asking them a question, context, each time you change the conversation topic.
Give people time to process what you’re saying or asking. If after a pause they still don’t respond, give them more information in case they’re still unclear (and possibly feeling stupid for being so).
Please be patient and remember that its not that we don’t care. ADHD brains are distractible, impatient and can be impulsive. We will forget things temporarily, often because there’s too many things going on in our heads at once. Which one are you referring to and what day is it and what were those things we forgot to even write on our to do list?
Thanks for taking an interest in and being willing to learn about what life can be like for neurodiverse people, in particular ADHDers. You being informed and trying to understand can make a big difference in your interactions with us, how we are perceived and ultimately on our wellbeing.
Key Points for Neurodiverse People
It’s ok to ask ‘stupid questions,’ restate and clarify what others are saying and to ask for time to process information. Its also ok to ask if you can get back to someone at a later time. You are allowed to take the time you need to process the situation, even and most especially when that timing doesn’t match neurotypical expectations.
Figure out how your brain works best. Develop strategies that work with and support your brain where possible, and that scaffold your brain where it struggles. Talking to other ND people may help, but we, our brains and circumstances vary and you’ll need to figure out what works best for you.
It may seem I’m asking you for the sun AND the moon, but we need to accept what we can and can’t do and make our peace with it to be content in life. This includes not comparing ourselves to neurotypicals and not beating ourselves up for not measuring up, or for not meeting neurotypical expectations. This world was not designed for us and that is NOT our fault.
If it is safe to do so and people at your work and home are willing to listen and are receptive to your words, tell them honestly what you struggle with. Tell them (when you’ve figured it out) how your brain makes some things difficult, and what they and you can do to make things easier.
Best of luck finding strategies that work for you!
Where do you get your ideas? is a question writers are often asked. But the question that interests me more is ‘where do the ideas for an entire fantasy world come from’? Having already blogged about the cultures and characters in my YA Fantasy Trilogy, I took the question to three fellow SFF authors: Joyce Reynolds-Ward, Mindi Briar and J.F.R. Coates.
How did you develop your magic system(s)?
J.F.R Coates
I love magic. A well-done magic system can add a huge amount of depth and interest to a world, and it’s no a surprise I’ve found a way to include magic in every story I’ve written so far.
I believe there are several important factors to consider when coming up with a magic system. How widespread is this magic system? Who can use it? What is the source of magic? And how is it used?
With my sci-fi series, I took a different approach. I worked hard to make something separate to the Force in Star Wars, so I linked the magic to the subspace dimension that also controls the setting’s FTL travel. Only a select few can utilise this magic, and it allows for the manipulation of inorganic matter. There is even one character who can sense the ripples of distant events through this dimension, giving him a limited ability to see into the future. Knowledge of this magic is strictly controlled by the religious fascist antagonists, so exploration of these newly-developed powers is just one of the many ways the main protagonist can break away from his old life.
Joyce Reynolds-Ward
In the Goddess’s Honour world, magic is tied to tangible things. It’s present in the land to various degrees, and the leaders of various nations must be able to channel and control that land’s magical strength in order to lead. Some nations require that the prospective leaders be able to weave a Tapestry or create some other sort of artefact that is reflective of the combination of their strength and the land’s.
In Becoming Solo, each chapter has an epigraph from assorted guides to that world’s particular form of witchcraft. Since Solo is, essentially, 4H Style Revue with magic, I needed a magic system that could be incorporated into clothing –and a reason for why it was so important for the woman winning assorted Crowns–Style, in this case to win those crowns, as well as what it meant to the magic system.
Mindi Briar
The “magic” in the Halcyon universe derives from the existence of alien dragons, who are able to teleport and read minds. I hate long travel scenes and wanted a way for my characters to travel between planets instantaneously. The dragons became intense pacifists who won’t teleport anyone they perceive as distressed, which means that pilots often have to take calming drugs. That prompted a bunch of questions about what it would mean for humanity to be in a symbiotic relationship with aliens.
In Adrift in Starlight, the dragons are revealed to be hiding the existence of other alien races from humans to protect the aliens. Later in the series, as the trust between humans and dragons breaks down, humans begin working on ways to steal the dragons’ power for themselves using genetic modification. This results in a group of humans who have dragon-like powers —the excuse I needed to give my characters “magic” but keep it plausible in the realm of science fiction.
What informs secular culture in your world?
J.F.R. Coates
This largely depends on what genre I’m writing, as that can play a big part into my vision for the world. My fantasy setting of Farenar tends to be one that I would like to live in – there is still conflict there, with wars between the gods and different interpretations of magic providing plenty to keep interesting, but I don’t tend to include a lot of the bigotry present in our world.
My sci-fi series, on the other hand, was a look towards the future of this world. I considered what might happen a few hundred years into the future if a few certain key events played out – largely revolving around the rise of the Catholic Church returning to a place of utmost power, like it had wielded in the Medieval Ages. This resulted in a pretty grim fascist empire controlling two of the three star systems humanity had reached. This also gave me a chance to explore the third system through the story, with all the issues and problems they face.
Mindi Briar
Quite honestly, I’m writing a world I would want to live in. I got into solarpunk back in 2015, and that’s been a huge inspiration for the planet Halcyon. I came at it with the mindset of, “If I got dropped on a new planet to build a society from the ground up, how would I structure it?” So I made it a socialist utopia where everyone works together for the common good, with the dragons as telepathic enforcers to keep everyone honest. It took a lot of drafts to fully flesh out my ideas, and half of it doesn’t even hit the page until book 3 in the series.
The other planets in the Halcyon universe are the late-stage capitalism foil to Halcyon’s socialism. There’s environmental damage, prison slavery, wealthy people taking too many resources…the Imperial government is kind of my take on where society could go if nothing ever changes.
How did you decide who would occupy positions of power?
J.F.R Coates
Characters in positions of power come in various forms in my stories – I definitely have a few with noble goals and intentions, but probably an equal number who abuse that power. Some even sway from one side to the other. The type of character they are can depend a lot on what my intentions for that power structure are. It is no coincidence that those in power in the fascist empire of the Reborn setting are older white men.
Monarchy and hereditary rule isn’t always portrayed as evil in my worlds, but it does lean that way more often than not. I like to display it as a flawed system, even when the characters in power have the best of intentions. This is certainly shown through the Destiny of Dragons fantasy series, where two of the main characters get their opportunity to rule, with varying levels of success.
Joyce Reynolds-Ward
Positions of power are tied to both leadership roles and the favour of the Seven Crowned Gods in the Goddess’s Honour world.
In Becoming Solo, leadership roles are earned by proof of magical strength and becoming a Solo-qualified magician, either by Academy graduation or else winning Fair Crowns. Otherwise, the witch either loses their power or must join a family spell matrix, where their power joins with others to produce magical goods. Solo magicians get to take credit for their creation. Family spell matrix participants are not identified in the products that the family creates for the use of those who are magical and non-magical.
Mindi Briar
In early drafts, Halcyon was ruled by a queen. It was my fantasy-world default, because who doesn’t love a good royalty story? However, the deeper I dove into worldbuilding, the more obvious it became that a monarchy was fundamentally incompatible with the idea of a socialist community. It had to become a democracy. But I still left the dragons in charge because their control of human culture had interesting implications that I wanted to explore.
In contrast, all the other planets in the Halcyon Universe are controlled by an emperor—one man with absolute power. This is portrayed as problematic in a number of ways that are, again, based on my frustrations with real-world systems of government.
What inspired religions?
J.F.R Coates
Religion takes a massive role in both of my settings. In the Reborn series, the entire conflict revolves around the position of the Catholic Church as the primary antagonist. I took a deliberate look at the church in the modern day and extrapolated out what I believed to be a logical conclusion, should the church be guided by the will of corrupt and power-hungry minds. These are people who do not care about the heart of the religion (which I intentionally did not criticise throughout the story), but are instead guided only by their own ambition. This is a religion that has been weaponised into something truly monstrous. Looking at how the world has developed since I first started writing the series, sometimes I wonder if I did not go far enough.
By contrast, the Farenar setting portrays religion much more positively. If anything, the religion spawned the world in my mind – it all started with the gods. They live, breathe, and walk through the world and are a big part of the many conflicts. Most of them seek to better the world, but some of their number seek instead to rule it.
Mindi Briar
Writing a made-up religion based on the dragons turned out to be an interesting way to deconstruct my personal IRL beliefs. Writing characters who were discovering big, life-changing truths about the universe was a way for me to dive deep into what I thought those truths were for myself. (And that’s the short version of how writing magical sci-fi helped me leave a cult…lol.) Anyway, I wouldn’t say the Halcyon Universe’s religion is an exact representation of my spiritual beliefs, but there are scenes, settings, and situations very heavily based on my religious past, with something of a rose-tinted filter over them.
What other sources of inspiration does your world draw on?
J.F.R Coates
So many of my inspirations come from the great authors who wrote rich and vivid worlds before me. I may not take directly from their work, but their writing has always inspired me to improve me own. My favourite authors will always include Neil Gaiman, Robin Hobb, and Philip Pullman. Our stories may be very different, but they are certainly my inspirations.
Other inspirations can come from strange places. One WiP series has been inspired by my childhood in Somerset, my fascination with an island in the Bristol Channel, and local myths.
The Reborn series was spawned because a friend told me to “turn him [main character] into a stoat.” So I did. And I wrote four books to explain why.
Mindi Briar
Reading fantasy and sci-fi inspires me all the time! I love to read books with lush, creative, wild descriptions that transport me somewhere new. It kickstarts my own imagination and forces me to think about different aspects of my own worldbuilding. A fantasy about road construction? Yeah, hmm, who builds the roads in my world? Or I’ll pick up a book that’s created a totally unique social culture and it’ll force me to think about how my world’s culture would be different.
For me Pride is complex. Raised in a cis, binary, heterosexual world that gave me zero role models and was oblivious to my existence means that like many, I didn’t realise my identities were queer until later in life. After three years, I still haven’t referred to queer history as ‘our history’ or the LGBTQIA+ community as ‘our community’. That seems presumptuous. And I hit these difficulties before considering what often looks to me like performative corporate allyship, companies mass producing queer products to capitalise on profits and people all saying ‘happy pride,’ while Florida’s government policies actively reshape it into a queer hellscape.
Pride Right Now
Pride At Work
I haven’t mentioned that its Pride Month at work. Work has been insanely busy, we’re all sick and there’s hardly a moment or the headspace to comment on something that isn’t work. I’m also the only openly queer person in my workspace and while my colleagues are kind, well meaning people, there’s a lot of ignorance. I’m not sure how much interest there is for things queer or how to proceed when I’m the only person flying the rainbow flag before all my cishet colleagues.
Pride Online
So I’m mostly seeing Pride online, packed with corporate performative allyship posts, and ‘love is love’ and ‘lets work together to make things better.’ And the cynical part of me wonders if that post is the only thing that organisation will do during Pride month (or ever), to support queer people. I’m sure some groups do more, but it almost feels like being accepting of queer people is politically correct, and socially and morally obliged, and mass displays of it at this one time of year can feel insincere.
On the flip side, so many organisations publicly displaying their acceptance of queer people does, as many recent tweets have pointed out, show the haters that hating on queer people isn’t the norm. That such hatred is unwelcome in many spaces. And while that causes initial inevitable backlash (which I’m fortunate enough to have only seen online, not irl), I share the optimism that it will ultimately help normalise being queer (especially being trans!).
Indie Author PrideOnline
I was grateful when Indie Book Spotlight started #IndiePride2 and I had a means of connecting with fellow queer authors. One of the prompt questions was: what does Pride mean to you? To some on the hashtag, its a celebration of how far queer people and our status in society has come. From being gay being illegal and legally defined as a mental illness, to gay marriage being legalised in many countries, for example. But also a time to protest, and to look at what still needs to be achieved. I’d define that partly as every homophobic argument made against gay men in the 80’s/ 90’s now being argued against trans people, and the legislative assault trans people are coming under, in Florida and California in particular.
Reaching Pride, Space to Be Queer
But before discussing the present and future, I’d like to look back to how I personally and many others came to the realisation we are queer, and Pride is for us. Because things don’t just happen in a vacuum, and many of us were unable to recognise our identities for a long time, because to us our world was a vacuume.
Queerness in The 90’s
I had no idea I was queer as a child. I played with girls. I played with boys. I played with girls and boys toys. I liked pretty clothes and pragmatic clothes. And like many 90’s kids, I knew you could be gay or straight. And that was about it. It didn’t stop me from punching bullies back. ‘Girls didn’t do that’, and I ‘was a girl’ in everyone else’s eyes. But I saw the world as I saw it, I thought what I thought, felt what I felt, believed what I believed and would not tolerate shit I would not tolerate. I demanded male respect while presenting as female in a sexist era. I suppose in some ways I was ‘one of the boys’ and in others ‘one of the girls’ and nowhere did I truly fit.
Queerness inThe 2000’s
‘Transexual’ was mentioned a little more then. The notion of a ‘man in a woman’s body’ and you could ‘get a sex change’. It was such early days for gender diversity. There were still such rigid expectations for women. Slut shaming was still at full throttle. But the ‘metrosexual’ was coined. Men were starting to break free of recent limitations in male gender expression, some growing their hair out, experimenting with make up, etc. And that helped me, because I realised those men were more feminine than I, and I more masculine than them. There was a little more space for me to recognise my own gender diversity.
Of course, there was still nothing like a single role model of anyone I wanted to be when I grew up. Because the gender binary was still an absolute power. But Blink 182 were rocking the charts alongside ‘metrosexual’ male artists and there seemed a little more room for queer existence than before. I even heard the terms ‘bisexual’ and ‘lesbian’. By my late teens, people were starting to say that using ‘gay’ as an insult was disrespectful to gay men and were beginning to discourage others from doing so.
It felt like millennials were starting to make and or create space to be alternative. To break away from the mainstream. Including to be queer. But so many queer labels and identities were so little, or not even understood, that for many of us, this was a time where we struggled to be what we could not see.
You Can’t Be What You Can’t See
Let me put not having labels or definitions for who I was into context. When I was 10 years old (in the 90s), I went to a family event and a male relative was there with a friend of his. My dad quietly told me, “That’s his boyfriend.” By the early 2000’s, another family member had joined the Melbourne Gay and Lesbian choir, and attending that choir’s Christmas Carols for several years became a family tradition.
I had the privilege of being raised in a family where queer family members who recognised themselves as such were welcomed, and where Pride was totally accepted. It was a very safe environment for me to ‘come out.’ But it wasn’t enough. ‘Gay’ meant loving the opposite or opposite and same sex back then. It didn’t mean not romantically loving anyone. It didn’t mean not experiencing sexual attraction. ‘Everyone’ in fiction, on tv, in books, in the movies, in real life ‘wanted’ a girlfriend/ boyfriend, and ‘wanted’ to have sex with them, sometimes on the first meeting, which I always found absurd. And ‘everyone’ everywhere ‘was a man or a woman.’
So What Am I?
Its very challenging to be proud of who you are, when you don’t even have names for the things you are. (Trust me, I’ve spent over 30 years trying to do just that 😉). I respected gays, lesbians and bisexuals. I liked how they just did their thing, despite peer pressure, despite prejudice. That they went out every day defying what most people expected them to be, and were just themselves. I tried to do the same, on my own, with no role modelling what so ever, because I didn’t have labels or a clear definition of who I was, nor any examples about how to express myself as a person.
Pride as Living Space
So how can anyone be queer when you’re queer in a way that’s ‘not a thing’? Let alone how do you be proud about it? If I felt masculine, I did masculine. If I liked a guy but didn’t actually want to ask him out, or even date him, I didn’t ask him out and tried not to encourage him too much. I slowly clawed my way towards a wardrobe balancing feminine and gender neutral attire. I wrote books from female and male perspectives, alternating between them as much as I wanted.
But I didn’t gain clarity about who I was, or how to more happily be me, until I started seeing others trying to do the same. I shrugged off the many people suggesting I try online dating because ‘surely I must want a romantic and sexual partner because isn’t that what every human wants’? I moved house, country etc (surrendering to the ADHD desire for novelty and challenges, long before recognising I had ADHD ‘only boys had ADHD in the 90s’ 🙃). That was a convenient excuse for never bothering to date, because I never lived anywhere long. But neither I nor anyone else had terms for what I was, so they kept expecting me to want what I didn’t want.
Pride as You Can Be Who You Can See
I know many people are wary of politics on Twitter, or fear it as a hellscape, even before current management took over. But Twitter was where I found Pride. No, not the month. Pride as in people who put things in their bios like ‘asexual’ or even… they/them pronouns. I started meeting and interacting with people who were queer beyond being same or same and opposite sex attracted. I learnt from them and we learnt from each other that there are so many other queer identities. That humanity has far more ways of being than the exceptionally limited cookie cutters society had been jamming us all into since childhood, despite plenty of us never fitting.
As I said in my blog Identifying as Nonbinary, identifying my pronouns and telling them to other people was an outward way to give myself permission to be my nonbinary self. To wear feminine, masculine or gender neutral clothing. To relate to other people as just a person, even and especially when they want to relate to each other and everyone else as ‘woman’ or ‘man.’
Many in my queer generation (and earlier generations) have had to overcome the disconnect between blundering through the dark to define and express ourselves and society inventing names for us 20, 30 even 40 years later. You have this vague sense of who you are and how to be you, and then these external, ‘foreign’ labels and gender identities pop up, and it can take years for you to realise you are that thing and it is a part of you.
Pride to Save Time
Let’s fast forward to the present. Now its not just Gay & Lesbian, its LGBTQIA+. Not only can you be bisexual, you can be pansexual. You can be aromantic, or asexual or demisexual. Its trans people now, trans men and women, a gender appropriately named as a gender and not lumped in with the word ‘sexual’ even though it isn’t a sexuality. And you can be nonbinary, and gender queer and agender and SO MANY things. And with names, and definitions and books like Heart Stopper and shows like Umbrella Academy, people can see their gender and sexuality in fiction. With safe online spaces and pronouns and sexualities in bios, people can see diversity in online life.
Its no longer necessary to blunder through the dark. There are names to go with identities, and fictional and real life people to look to as examples. Its easier than ever to find your queer people, to not be alone. To have people to share experiences and challenges with. To ask questions of. To find your way on your journey of being and expressing your authentic self with.
And then there’s the bigots.
Get Back in the Closest
Yes, that’s exactly what a religious nut job recently told me, right after accusing me personally of turning western civilisation into a circus for daring to encourage, via public tweet, people to live as their queer selves. Its easy to laugh off extremists like that. And people running around saying, “the Bible says its a sin, don’t be proud to be queer” when the supposed lord and saviour of these supposed Christians said stuff like “let he who is without sin throw the first stone” and something about attending to the plank in one’s own eye before attending to the speck in one’s neighbour’s. And who, despite popular opinion in some circles that he said “hate thy neighbour” actually said “love thy neighbour as thyself.”
But Pride Month had barely began before the book What is a Woman, so packed full of attacks on trans people’s existence that I soon forgot it supposedly related to women, was released. And people are tweeting about ‘Family Pride Month,’ you know, ‘family’ as defined by bigots, in opposition to all things queer. Then there’s the ‘when do we get straight pride month?’ crowd, who are so used to everything always being about them that a whole month dedicated to someone else is apparently more than they can cope with.
A lot of the above may just be noise. But the 369 anti-trans bills currently active in the United States are not. These bills include things like denying teachers and students the right to be addressed by pronouns not matching their biological sex on their birth certificate (which would misgender me). They include limiting gender affirming care (care which spares people being trapped in a body that every time you see its reflection isn’t you, because it doesn’t match your gender, aka dysmorphia).
I’ve been very lucky with dysmorphia. My body is a mix of classic masculine and feminine traits. Only seeing myself on film do I see someone whose face or expressions aren’t right, or their voice sounds wrong. Its like watching a mockery of myself, when it is actual footage of me. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. To wish, let alone force dysmorphia on people is to wish them mental illness and self harm. And that’s exactly what Desantis seems to be praying to God for trans people to have.
The Future
So much has been gained in recent decades. Pride Month seems to get bigger each year. And yes, it is nice to say ‘happy Pride!’ and to celebrate all the queer community is and has achieved. And queer joy can be a rare thing, so much so that I don’t feel I can enter my queer ownvoices book in an author contest specifically for queer authors, because the contest is for books about “the struggle to be queer in the modern world”. So yes, there’s room to celebrate, for queer joy and plenty to be PROUD of.
But its the fight that sticks with me in 2023. This map of countries where its illegal to be queer won’t surprise experienced travellers like myself. But even to a casual observer, people referring to all LGBTQIA+ people as groomers (see Twitter) and claiming all of us are pedeophiles (see #NotADragQueen for convicted, actual child sex offenders) looks to me like people getting their ducks in a row before they shoot them. What is a Woman was described in this partly theatrical, but also thoroughly researched documentary as a rallying cry to incite hatred of and violence towards trans people. Having watched her full analysis of the book, I agree with Jessie Earl’s interpretation of it.
Yet so many bigoted morons on Twitter are tweeting ‘what rights are trans people being denied?’ Meanwhile a certain rich white woman would like everyone to believe cis women are victimised by the existence of trans women. And so many misogynists are happy to ‘defend’ TERFs against the existence of trans women (including literal, self identified fascists in my own city).
Pride to me?
In his monologue in June 2022, First Australian Mene Wyatt said “silence is violence.” A blog about Melbourne’s fascists expressed the view that most people, whom it called ‘normies’ truly oppose the ‘evil transes’. If fascists like that don’t hear people articulating that we actually don’t think trans people should be eradicated (yes, the Melbourne fascist banner called for exactly that), than Mene Wyatt is right. We’ll have haters committing violence in the name of ‘normal people’/ the bulk of the human population against LGBTQIA+ people —trans people first.
So to me, Pride is my chance to say: don’t let fascists presume they speak for you. Tell people where you stand. So no one can falsely claim to speak for you. Don’t be silent and let others believe they are committing violence in your name. (Fellow Aussies, we can use our voices to VOTE YES in the Voice Referendum, while we’re on the subject 😉). Yes, things have come far for us queer folks and that’s great. But I want to see everything we’ve gained and so many have worked so hard for weather the current storm, futuresurvive and thrive.
Why Proper Formatting Is Important -a guest blog by Joyce Reynolds-Ward
We’ve all read the different essays from editors about editing, right? All of that good stuff about slashing excessive adjectives and adverbs, eliminating said-bookisms (definition: going out of your way to use any other dialogue tag besides “said”), cutting prepositional phrases and the like, correct?
All of that is good information to have. But I want to harp on something else about editing that isn’t discussed as often as another big issue.
Formatting.
Formatting is one of those processes that can make your editor either love you or hate you. And if you work with an editor who charges by the hour—i.e., actual time spent working on your manuscript—a clean format saves you a lot of money. Even if you work with an editor who charges a flat fee, clean formatting means that your editor has more time to focus on actual wordage rather than fixing a messy manuscript so that they can get around to working on the words rather than the formatting.
You get a better deal for the money spent on an editor if you spend a little bit of time formatting your manuscripts correctly. Period.
Some of this is simply common sense. A clean manuscript causes less eyestrain for the editor. It’s easier for anyone doing the layout in a production program if the manuscript fits standard formatting protocols. Copyediting and proofreading go much more smoothly.
Most of all, a properly formatted manuscript demonstrates that you are a professional. Period.
Style Guides
So let’s get started. What sort of formatting setups am I talking about?
First of all, if you aren’t familiar with the basics, please go to this site—https://www.shunn.net/format/
Also keep in mind that all of my references are for Word. Again, that’s a professional standard. I understand that others prefer other programs, but in the long run, your documents end up in Word when editors and publishers are working with them. Your formatting needs to be compatible with Word.
The Shunn formatting style is widely accepted by all publishers. Use it, especially for margins and typeface (that means no Calibri! Use Times New Roman at the minimum. I prefer Palatino but others like Garamond, Helvetia, or Bookman Old Style. Essentially, you want to use a serif font that is readable. I personally do not care for Courier or Courier New, but that’s because I no longer find them to be that readable).
I want to emphasize something that Shunn mentions in that first page, which is start with a blank document. Some editors recommend Styles. I’m not fond of using Styles, because it adds extra codes to your document, which can cause problems when someone starts formatting for publication. Plain old blank document works just fine.
Getting Started
Another thing—you’ll see a little symbol that looks like this ¶ on the ribbon at the top of your document. Click it on, and you will see all of the formatting codes that Word wants to show you. This is helpful for figuring out some issues, and allows you to see when you’ve inadvertently hit the space bar multiple times (or your hyperreactive touch pad or keyboard does that for you), or other issues. More on that later.
Set your margins. Then format your paragraphs. That means, in Word, that you go to Format>Paragraphs. Set your line spacing to double spacing and your first line indent to 0.5, with no extra spacing between paragraphs. This means that all you need to do to start a paragraph is hit return.
Spacing
DO NOT USE YOUR TAB BUTTON FOR PARAGRAPH INDENTATION. That just causes more problems for whoever is laying out the manuscript for publication. Don’t hit the space bar five times, either. Again, that causes more issues.
Single space between sentences. Yes, yes, I know that double spacing used to be the standard and for some people it doesn’t look right. However, that era is long gone, even for those of us who started out writing on manual typewriters. Don’t do it. Otherwise, your dear editor or formatter will at the minimum need to do a find-and-replace to eliminate those extra spaces—and that double spacing between sentences can add quite a few pages to your manuscript, especially at novel length. If an editor is quoting you a flat fee based on manuscript pages, single spacing between sentences can save you a little bit of money.
One of my editors automatically deletes any spaces between a period and a hard return, because that space can cause issues in some formatting programs. I haven’t noticed that issue in particular when working with my formatting program (Vellum), but I understand that this is a problem with some programs.
Justification
Always use left justification (the default) unless you are doing something in particular with a small section, or centering a title. Right-side ragged edge is not an issue when drafting and editing, as modern formatting programs automatically convert left-justified Word documents to full-justified documents.
Page Breaks
If you use scene break dividers instead of an extra space (I recommend the dividers, but some people don’t like them), show them with a #. Some people use asterisks, or multiple #s. I’ve found that formatting programs understand # just fine, and will put a prettier scene break divider in nicely when # appears between paragraphs. Some presses have different standards—<<<>>> for one, or ~0~ for another, but # also works just fine.
Spelling and Grammar Check
Do not completely trust your spellchecker or grammar checker in Word. I have discovered numerous mistakes in Word alone, including indicators of extra commas, word substitutions that don’t make sense (such as “cheap” when I was describing a bird’s “cheep”—my most recent gripe). One of my greatest rants is the misuse of “free reign” for “free rein.” Word will tell you to use “reign” instead of “rein,” and it is WRONG. The idiom refers to giving a horse more rein when you are riding or driving it—i.e., telling the horse to set its own pace and direction. That is what the idiom means. Period. “Free reign” is meaningless in that context. But Word also makes mistakes when it comes to the proper use of “its” versus “it’s”; “lets” versus “let’s”. Be aware.
If you don’t trust your spelling and grammar understanding, use other checkers besides Word. Also, don’t trust that it will identify all of your misspellings and typos. If the mistake looks like a real word but doesn’t make sense in context, then Word may not flag it for you.
When you are cutting and pasting across documents, or if you are working on different devices (especially switching between a tablet and desktop or laptop) be aware that Word will insert a superscript “o” irregularly in those sections. Those have to be edited out by hand, as far as I know. Some people may be macro wizards who know how to do it otherwise. It’s a pain but there’s no way around it. If everything else is clean, then editing those “o” appearances isn’t that big a deal.
Version Control (during edits)
This leads into the related but short topic of version control when working with editors or beta readers. I do not recommend working within the document that you get back from an editor or beta reader. My suggestion is that you designate one version as your final document, and do all editing within that document without cutting and pasting. Why? Because that introduces other formatting into your document, including those dratted superscript “o”s.
I learned this lesson the hard way when working with a British editor. Working in the document I got back instead of my own designated final document ended up with that person’s formatting instead of my own—including British English spell check and usages. Designating that separate final document also lets you work with multiple other versions. I do like keeping earlier versions around when drafting, because sometimes I end up cutting things that I wanted to keep in the long run.
Concluding Remarks
Basically, the lesson here is to spend a little bit of time learning how to set up your formatting options, at least as much as you can do with your device. Apps on mobile devices such as tablets and phones can be more restrictive for formatting setups than laptops or desktops. It’s probably a good idea to indicate to your editor or beta reader that you may have been doing this work in an app on a mobile device, because then they know what to look for in fixing it.
Play with your formatting and understand it. Your editor will thank you—and you may save yourself a little bit of money in the long run.
About the Author -Joyce Reynolds-Ward
Joyce Reynolds-Ward is a speculative fiction writer who splits her time between Enterprise and Portland, Oregon. Her books include THE MARTINIERE MULTIVERSE series (Amazon, Kobo, Apple, B&N), THE MARTINIERE LEGACY series, KLONE’S STRONGHOLD, THE NETWALK SEQUENCE series and GODDESS’S HONOR series. Joyce has edited two anthologies, Pulling Up Stakes (2018), and Whimsical Beasts (2019).
Besides writing, Joyce enjoys reading, quilting, horses, skiing, and outdoor activities. She has been a member of Soroptimist International of Wallowa County since 2017.
Mara Lynne Johnstone and I met via Twitter when I was preparing to become an indie author. I was an ARC reader of her debut SciFi novel Spectacular Silver Earthling, which stars a robot with attitude, whom a friend compared aptly to Bender from Futurama.
Tell us a bit about you. Where’s home and what’s your life like outside writing?
I live in California, where the weather is lovely when things aren’t on fire or flooding. Husband, son, cats. I do a lot of writing-related things even when I’m not working on my own projects: organising events and anthologies for the local writers’ club, judging for contests, and planning multiple cooperative projects with other writers. Plus I play a lot of D&D with good friends, which is an excellent form of storytelling that sometimes leads to actually writing things down.
What drew you to your genre/audience age?
I’ve always loved reading fantasy and science fiction— all the exciting adventures that I couldn’t expect to do in real life. While I would have loved to grow up to be a dragon-rider, dimension traveller, or shapeshifting magician, I made the decision early on to write about it instead. I’ve never looked back.
What are some big themes your writing explores?
I’m sure if you look closely, a lot of my stories boil down to “Treating others well gets you farther than treating them badly.” That’s a pretty basic trope, but it’s amazing how many different ways you can show antagonists who are cruel and sow the seeds of their own downfall while the protagonists cooperate. Now that I think about it, the last three books I wrote all hinge on the main characters making friends who help make victory possible. It’s definitely something that’s held true in my own life, so I’m not surprised it comes through in fiction. Anyone who’s worked retail can tell you that the nice customers are the ones who get all the favors, while the pushy ones only think they’re getting a better deal. Friendship is magic in all forms.
What drives your point of view characters?
They often have a catastrophe to avert, a kingdom/species/planet to protect, but sometimes the core conflict is as personal as specific friends that they care about intensely. My characters tend to be optimistic and resilient, though with a definite range on the “dignity to silliness” meter. A good sense of humor is crucial in coping with all manner of crises.
Some are more like me than others, but there’s always a facet that makes them feel familiar on a deep level. An element of “Oh yes, this is what I would do.” That can mean being patient and chronicling part of their life through art, or being the centr of attention with witty things to say, or being ready and willing to befriend any random animal that crosses their path. I like to say I’m an ambivert: just as happy reading alone as dancing on a table with friends. I can see myself in the quiet characters just as much as the wisecracking loudmouths — as long as they’re kind. And I like to think that all of my main characters would make good friends, just in a variety of ways.
How much do your point of view characters resemble or differ from you?
And for the record, Robin Bennett of A Swift Kick to the Thorax has the most similarities of any character I’ve written, simply because her first short story was an exploratory bit of nonsense that I didn’t expect anyone to ever see. Ha. It turned out to be great fun, and snowballed into two novels and an endless list of short stories. I regret nothing.
What influenced the settings they inhabit? (What real world places, experiences, studies etc influence your world building?)
I keep a collection of ideas to use in fiction someday, and that includes many interesting locations. The sandstone beaches and bizarre rock formations in Spectacular Silver Earthling were based on those at Salt Point State Park. The car chase through a lightning storm in Swift Kick was inspired by a photo of thunderstorm weather over farmland. I am endlessly fascinated by how many awe-inspiring sights there are in our world; more than enough to create a whole galaxy of others. I’m always taking note of more.
What do you gain from writing your books and what do you hope your readers will gain from them?
I have fun with it, first and foremost. Delightful adventures; memorable experiences; fictional friends who are near and dear to my heart. Since I grew up reading constantly, I’ve lived many a life through other writer’s books, and I hope to bring readers along for the ride with my own. There’s so much to do and see: excitement and drama, exploration and close calls, good times and cathartic emotion. My characters can find things to enjoy in even the darkest times, and they’ll see you through to the other side. Often with a feeling of “Woo, that was intense! Let’s do it again.”
Mara Lynn Johnstone grew up in a house on a hill, of which the top floor was built first. Interested in fiction, she went on to get a Master’s Degree in creative writing, and to acquire a husband, son, and three cats. She has published several books and many short stories. She writes, draws, reads, and enjoys climbing things and can be found up trees, in bookstores, lost in thought, and on various social media.
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You’ll find more talk of fantasy characters, setting and world-building inspiration in: Fantasy Author Feature: Debbie Iancu-Hadad
I’ve never considered myself to be ‘normal’ or ‘just like everyone else’. When you’re a nonbinary person, and an asexual aromantic in a world of binary gender adults interested in romantic relationships and sex —you don’t fit. You often don’t quite present, sound or act like most people. But as I try to iron out creases that trip me up in my teaching career, and talk to neurodiverse friends on Twitter, I’m seeing another set of differences in how I think, feel and function that also set me apart.
NeurodiverseCommunication
Rehearsing Conversations
I’m guessing neurotypical people rehearse conversations in their heads when they’re giving a speech, or telling someone they really care about something that really matters to them. By the time I was around fifteen, I was I rehearsed ANYTHING and EVERYTHING I may like to say to my friends before saying it aloud. I would approach social situations with prepared topics and comments drafted in my brain and would be happy when I got to say them all.
Did I monitor the interest levels of people as I plunged through my pre-rehearsed topics? Not really. Sometimes when I’d finished talking I did. Knowing how much to say about a topic and not rambling on and on when the other person isn’t as interested as me is a life skill I am probably still learning, in my thirties. I have to consciously and consistently monitor people and reflect on whether I’m maybe saying too much.
What are You on About?
As a teenager, I routinely initiated conversations with peers because it was the easiest way to communicate. Even as an adult I find other people starting the conversation challenging. With people I don’t know well, the first thing I think they’re saying usually isn’t what they mean. I’ve developed a habit of listening, ignoring my first interpretation, and waiting until a second or third interpretation forms before I respond. Usually by then I’ve correctly identified the topic and their intended meaning. If I take too long to do that, I comment on one aspect I’m sure I understand, to encourage them to say more, to give me more time to figure out what they’re talking about.
When I’m tired, I also struggle because I interpret things literally. I suspect that any other time I remember what I know about that person, or topic and do mental gymnastics to get from what they literally said to what they actually mean. That gets socially awkward because neurotypical people, especially adults in a professional context, tend to want immediate answers to their questions. But they don’t say what they literally mean, so I need processing time to do mental gymnastics before I can answer.
Hyper Focus
This can make social interactions difficult. For example, when I’m planning what I’m teaching next week I plan teacher groups on four days of writing, despite 30 minutes earlier discussing having three Writing lessons that week. Because if I am planning Writing, my brain is NOT thinking about the timetable, it is thinking about WRITING (this is the case for almost everything, almost always).
Often in meetings I’m hyper focused on one main thing, and someone asks or talks about something else. There’s a mental distance between me and them. To cross it, I have to pull back from that one thing I was thinking about. I need at least two, if not three details to figure out where on Earth my colleague is standing, let alone how to cross the mental gulf between us to talk about the same thing. And piecing together those clues takes time, so again I need more processing time in face to face, or on the phone conversations, when adults expect an immediate response. (This is why I love emails and social media, because I can take all the processing time I want before responding.)
Group Conversations
Picture this. You’re in a meeting in which other people frequently give very few contextual clues, and elaborate on each other’s thoughts or change the topic rapidly. You don’t have enough contextual information to pull back from your hyper-focus to get what Joe is saying, and now Jane is saying something else, and then Max changes the topic again. Its like everyone else is is cycling on a level surface as a group, and you’re in the skate park stuck on jumps. You’re hitting road blocks, and doing all sorts of crazy gymnastics to move in a straight line and wondering why its so hard to keep up with the group cycling/ conversation. This is me in staff meetings.
What are Social Graces?
I’ve never been a fan of a few basic social conventions.
1. I don’t use names.
I’m a teacher. I know that people like being addressed by name. That a simple thing like that can fill people’s buckets. But in a state of nature I would never speak to anyone by name unless they had their back to me. I’m just not wired that way. I’ve had to learn to use my students and colleagues names often and it’s something I often have to do consciously and deliberately, where everyone else seems to do it naturally.
So how do I speak to people? As I sociable person who likes people, I just walk up to them and start talking about whatever I notice that relates to them/ us/ the setting at the time. I often catch people off guard, and they take a moment to process what I’m saying, and introverts struggle. But I’ve started some great conversations that way.
2. I don’t like eye contact.
This is a classic, obvious autistic trait but I was unconcious of it for quite some time. Because people look you in the eyes and insist you look back from childhood. So you make yourself do it and pretend it doesn’t bother you. Or you make eye contact so they know you’re listening but you keep finding excuses to look away. They don’t notice anything. And you don’t want to notice how uncomfortable eye contact makes you, because God knows how often how many people are trying to make eye contact with you and you’re trying to uncomfortably meet it!
3. I don’t do small talk.
When you talk to people you’re supposed to ask how they are. When they’re strangers you’re supposed to do ice breakers, or ‘polite conversation starters’ or —hell, I don’t know because I don’t do it. Why? Because I’m not interested. I’m interested in what I’m interested in, so I’m just going to launch into that with no names, greetings, preamble or niceties —no time wasting— lets get into it! (Yeah the impatience is likely ADHD which I have quite a few traits of, and not just the ones that overlap with autism.) Again, I have had to spend lots of time learning and practicing asking how people are, or thinking of things that matter to them and asking how those things are going. I do care about the latter. If they start talking about it I will show interest in my responses. But its not natural for me to think to ask about other people. I used to just assume that if something mattered to people they wouldn’t need an invitation to talk about it and would just say it, but I’m learning there are many exceptions to that.
Neurodiverse me, hiking in the Otway Ranges, March 2023.
Brain Functioning
Organisation
Time Managementhigh school
I had no idea what the above words meant as a kid or teenager. I lived a five-minute walk from the back gate of my school. I walked to school and was often a few minutes late. Why? Because to get to class on time I had to know how long it took me to get ready for school, how long the walk was, factor in the time to get from the gate to my locker, to carry my books from my locker to my classroom. I had to juggle four things I have no inclination to deal with it, at the same time.
[And what was the point of being on time to class? Lining up outside the room? Waiting for everyone to slowly take their seats? If I came in right as the teacher was starting the roll —no time was wasted. I’ve always known I was a why person. If you asked me to do something I saw no reason for doing and gave me no reason —I wouldn’t do it. (More on this later.)]
Time Management University
At University I quickly realised I was not going to keep track of which assignments were due when, or even remember the assignments I had to do. And I’ve always found dates meaningless. There’s just days of the week, and which week it is of the school term or holidays (which works well for me as a teacher). So how did I manage time around classes, a casual job and getting all the assignments done? I learned early on that starting an assignment within a week of getting it, working on it as often as I was motivated to, then doing the next got things done on time. So my ‘time management’ is just ‘start early and hope it works’.
Navigating to New Places
I sucked at this, for over a decade after getting my licence. Navigating to an unfamiliar place meant looking it up in the Melways (a print book as this was pre sat nav and pre Google Maps), calculate travel time, factor in time to find a car park and time to walk from my car to the unfamiliar place. I got lost A LOT the year I got my licence. As an adventurous, easy-going person, I learned to embrace and enjoy it. If you drove too far out of town, the green signs would tell you where the next town/ suburb was and I trusted those signs and didn’t worry too much.
But when I had to be at that unfamiliar place at a certain time? That remained a challenge because I found it REALLY hard to factor all four of those things to get there on time for… about fifteen years. Not because I’m stupid. Not because I’m too lazy to plan. But because the night before when I set my alarm clock, or when I decide my departure time, I forget time to find a carpark, or get from my car to the unfamiliar place or that peak hour traffic is a thing (to this day that one catches me out).
I’m Thinking…
Hyper Focus
This has advantages too. As a teen, my mum and brother could be arguing in the next room, and I wouldn’t really hear them because I was hyper-focused on writing or editing my latest novel. But it wasn’t the greatest for my health as a teenager. In hindsight, I didn’t dress warmly enough in winter. I’d hyper-focus on the fun stuff I was doing with friends and not notice how cold I was. That wasn’t good for my asthma or hey fever. Or I’d hyper focus on writing on school holidays, then realise it was four o’clock in the afternoon and I hadn’t eaten lunch yet. I still have to be careful when I’m working on anything important to me —at work or books at home— to keep an eye on the time, and not go too long without meal or bathroom breaks or get too hot or too cold. Its a constant thing.
What’s the Point?
As I said earlier, why be on time for class, so I can line up outside, wait for everyone else to enter and sit down slowly and get zero benefits for having got out of bed a bit earlier? If you want me to do something —tell me why. The fact you want me to do it doesn’t motivate me. The fact you were my parent or teacher and even now, the fact alone that its my boss asking doesn’t motivate me. Intrinsic motivation for me is not conforming to other people’s expectations, their wants, being obedient or doing anything purely because someone asked. I care about, I want to understand, I am motivated by WHY. Tell me how it benefits people —students, colleagues, my boss, me —anybody— or how it makes my work more productive, or easier, or safer or whatever. That’s what motivates me. I don’t know anyone else so strongly motivated by being told why.
Who Cares What People Think?
I concluded as a teenager that collectively: people are stupid. Everyone else’s main motivator at high school seemed to be ‘does this help me fit in’? or ‘is it cool’? And what makes something cool? Cool kids think it’s cool. And what makes them cool? They just are. Does that make any rational sense whatsoever? No. So are they all nuts? Obviously. So did I have any respect for their opinions about anything? No.
I suspect the weight I’ve given to rational arguments over everything else since about the age of seven, and especially throughout my teens, the black and white way I tend to see people and complex situations is another very neurodiverse trait I have. Yes, I like people and I’ve always desired friends. But I want friends on my terms. I want to be me. I don’t want to conform to other people’s expectations of me. They expect me to a binary female. They expect me to be hetro sexual. They expect me to be neurotypical. I am none of those things. So I’ve always been disinterested in anyone who doesn’t like me for me and created my own space to be me. Since I was 15, my attitude has been “I am me and if you don’t like it you can get stuffed.”
I’m Excited! Are You Excited?
There are many reasons I love teaching primary school children. Mainly, because so many things are new and exciting to them. They’re excited to be alive, and so am I. They see new amazing things and cry ‘Wow!’ They don’t care if they draw attention to themselves. They don’t care if people judge them for their enthusiasm. I don’t either.
I remember sitting in a tutorial in my first year of university and being astounded at how un-animated my classmates were. They sat so still. They looked so out of it. I put my hand up to give a wrong answer on purpose because no one else would answer the question. I wanted to knock on their skulls and call, ‘Hello? Is anybody home? Or am I taking this class with a bunch of zombies?’
There’s always been a large disconnect between my excitability and the majority of the adult population. When I meet new people, or familiar people, when I’m outside experiencing nature or exploring new places —I’m energised. I’m excited. I’m animatedly loving and living life to the full. I’m surprised that everyone is smiling at me. Then I realise I’m doing that thing where I walk around with a big smile on my face and am oblivious to doing so.
Does my brain have an off button?
I have two speeds: fast and stationary. I’m functioning at 100 miles an hour, or I’m asleep. There are rarely inbetween modes. This is because my brain DOES NOT STOP. No matter how tired I am, I am almost always thinking something, often something complicated and deep (this nearly killed me when I had long covid. My body was FUCKED and I still couldn’t rest properly for weeks). The only things that keep me present in my physical surroundings are hyper-focusing on the scenery around me and or the inner symphony playing in my head (I often have instrumental music playing in my head, usually matching my mood, especially when I’m really happy).
As a teenager I’d sometimes stay up writing novels till midnight, when my exhausted body would insist on sleep. In my twenties I switched from power walking to running five days a week, to make my body so tired that it would drag my brain to sleep at night. (That was still crucial when I started teaching full time, which should have tired me sufficiently but didn’t). In my thirties I tire more easily and don’t need as much exercise, but regular exercise still makes a HUGE difference in how well I mentally switch off and how deeply and effectively I sleep at night.
Stopping and Resting to Get Well
Self-care has perhaps been my single greatest challenge as a teacher. I always underestimate how sick I am. Usually drastically (and with a weak chest and asthma I can get SICK in winter). I spent years being terrible at lying in bed or on the couch. I’d get bored so easily. I’d try to write novels when my brain wasn’t up to it. I’d read them when it was still tiring. I’d go out for walks when I was barely well enough to stand because I HATE sitting inside all day. (Yes, even when long covid fatigue made me feel I’d gained literally gained 20-30 kilos I’d still drag myself out to walk even when a three hour lie down was what I desperately needed).
I suspect ADHD levels of desire for sensory and mental stimulation make rest very challenging for me. That’s probably why if I’m on Twitter a lot —I’m sick. Tweets are short, easy to read and write unless I’m in a comma. And they’re stimulating. So Twitter is how I talk my brain into taking it easy. Then I try to switch to tv shows, then reading, to properly relax my mind and body and let them rest so I can get well. Again, learning how to do this defies all my natural instincts and has taken YEARS. I really see ADHD all over this.
Why did you change that?
In a recent meeting at work, I was asked to do something in a different order, for which I couldn’t use my normal data, with no forewarning. I sat there going WHAT? How am I supposed to do that? We’re supposed to do the other thing first? And I won’t be able to use the thing that normally helps me. How on Earth am I supposed to do that?
There was a solution, and having had to develop all sorts of habits to make navigating a neurotypical world as a neurodiverse person easier my entire life, I quickly found it. But I’m not fond of things changing without notice. Last time I missed a flight, I had to take time to take it in. Just breathe. I can’t now do x, y, or z. Plans have changed. Then gradually, one step at a time I make a new plan of how to do things. Standing in the ticketing queue for two hours was a perfect opportunity to do this.
So heads up, if you know a neurodiverse person (especially someone who’s autistic): don’t spring sudden changes on them! Sudden change is stressful. It often needs to be processed faster than I’m capable of processing it. And if you’re the parents of an autistic child: always give them an idea of how long they can do that thing they love, that they must pack up in five minutes, in two minutes, now. Sudden change is bad!
What was I doing again?
It’s classic me that at this stage in the blog, if there was any logical connection between one subheading and another —I completely forget what it is. I knew I’d fully recovered from long covid the day I found myself working on the sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth jobs I wanted to do at home, having started, not finished and forgotten about jobs 1-5. I’m very easily distracted. The notion of beginning one thing and continuing it until its finished without starting at least three other things first is utterly foreign to me.
I normally have 70 tabs open on my computer, the maximum. If I don’t have every tab I use as an author and in my private open at once, how will I possibly remember all the digital jobs I was doing? When I completely lose track, at least once I week, I open all tabs I don’t recognise. I find writing competitions, book promotions, the latest author platform to join etc. I like open tabs for the same reason I write to do lists on physical sticky notes: because its right in front of me. I never understood the point of diaries. You write dates in them, shut them, and everything inside them ceases to exist. If I can’t see it, I forget its there. So I keep my to do list on one page, and in some cases literally put physical tasks where I will fall over them so I don’t forget them.
ADHD?
My high levels of energy, inability to switch off, tendency to prefer doing umpteen things at once, to forget anything I can’t see, to fail to focus well enough to manage time or navigate to new places all point to ADHD for me. My doctor thinks so too. I’ve bumbled along, noticing things I find it easier to do differently to everyone else, accepting things I suck at that they find easy, and just doing what works for me. Or making it work for me, like exercising regularly to sleep well at night. I’m relearning to manage it all, long covid having suppressed all my ADHD tendencies completely for seven months. So my next blog on this topic will be strategies I’ve developed to help manage my neurodiversity.
Debbie Iancu-Hadad is author of YA Fantasy and SciFi with strong romantic threads. Our debut trilogies publishing journeys have run parallel and we’ve been critical readers for each other during our editing journeys. My favourite things about her books are her well-developed characters, their flaws and the banter and relationships that exist or develop between them. I also enjoy the fast pace of her stories, which keep me turning pages through her fantasy and sci-fi worlds. Here, was discuss her characters and story worlds.
Tell us a bit about you. Where’s home and what’s your life like outside writing?
I live in Meitar in the south of Israel. I’m self employed and when I’m working I give laughter yoga workshops, chocolate workshops and teach people how to improve their humour.
I’m married and have two kids, my daughter is almost twenty and my son just turned 18. And my writing buddy Shugi is a five months old golden retriever mix.
What drew you to your genre/audience age?
I write the kind of books I’ve always read, which is fantasy and sci Fi for YA. Maybe one day I’ll write for adults but I’d probably need to grow up first. My first Nanowrimo project “The goodbye kids” was inspired by my daughter when she was 16, and I just stayed in the zone. My Achten Tan series has characters ranging between 16-22.
What are some big themes your writing explores?
I like to discuss what makes us belong to a place and how where we’re from shapes our perspective. All my locations are very immersive, whether it’s a space station or a town made of bones in the middle of the desert.
Another issue I want to promote is body positivity and the inclusion of people with disabilities.
What drives your point of view characters?
A profound desire to prove themselves. Mila in Achten Tan wants to release her magic and get her voice back. Kaii the chief’s son in The Bone Master doesn’t want responsibility but won’t turn his back on a friend. Haley in the Goodbye Kids just wants to avoid getting hurt again, but desperately needs a friend.
How much do your point of view characters resemble or differ from you?
There are probably pieces of me in all my characters, if not my current self then the way I was when I was younger.
I’d love to say I have magical powers but sadly I have yet to come into my powers (I’m hoping it’s an old lady thing that’s still in my future).
Joking aside, all my characters work through the sense of being an outsider. For me that reflects moving from England to Israel as a child and always feeling like a part of somewhere else.
What influenced the settings they inhabit?
Achten Tan is a place like no other, a town built inside the rib cage of an ancient leviathan.
The place is the brainchild of Chris Van Dyke, who initiated the original Achten Tan anthology. I just moved in there and refused to leave.
The space station and futuristic world of The Goodbye Kids are nothing I’ve ever experienced outside of my imagination. I was going for a sense of extreme isolation.
What do you gain from writing your books and what do you hope your readers will gain from them?
Millions and millions of dollars…ha ha, I wish.
No, but seriously, I love having people share my character’s journey and being able to leave daily life aside for a while. I write about magic and it might be a cliche, but books really do have the ability to transport us to another time and place.
Where can we find your books?
On Amazon.
My fantasy debut, “Speechless in Achten Tan,” has a kick-ass tattooed witch who can’t speak, a city made of bones, giant ants, a heist by a cool ensemble cast, magic, romance, banter, innuendo, & cute boys kissing.
My name is Debbie Iancu Haddad (46), I’m a mother of teenagers (it’s like being a mother of dragons except they burn you with sarcasm).
for my day job, I am a public speaker specializing in teaching people how to use humor and a laugh yoga instructor.
I was born in Israel to a British mother & Romanian father who met in the immigration center in Beer-Sheva. When I was 10 months old the family returned to England for six years and re-emigrated in 1981.
Growing up bilingual in Israel was a huge help and saw me through a BA, an MA, and a third of a PhD. Even though I take studying seriously (almost no one who knows me would say too seriously) – my research interests focused on humor.
My MA was an exploration of Diet humor and my doctorate research was about humor as a communication tool used by managers and headmasters.
You may ask “don’t I take anything seriously?”
The answer is: “No. But thank you for asking”.
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Related Reading
You’ll find more talk of fantasy characters, setting and world-building inspirations in:
Many writers study writing. I studied history, archaeology, politics and religion in my Bachelor of Arts, to inform my world-building. I don’t just want to build worlds that mirror eras of ours, in the past or present. Or to write only speculative fantasy that challenges flaws of the present. I want to write alternate worlds that differ from ours. To develop culture and elements like Tarlahn attitudes in my Ruarnon Trilogy, where the term ‘gender diversity’ doesn’t exist, because the male, female and midlun genders have always been. So before you begin borrowing societal and cultural inspiration for your fantasy or SciFi world wholesale from ours, take a speculative lens to things. Think about aspects of society and culture you want to write alternate realities of.
Alternate Worlds
Consider a Bronze Age matriarchy. A queer-positive iron age. Different races who interact not with racism, slavery or colonisation, but perceive each other as equals, in war or peace. Don’t import patriarchy, monarchy, democracy, monotheism, racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, liberalism or capitalism just because they thrive in our world. I challenge you to begin considering every aspect of society in your fictional world from ground zero (this being my personal goal in future series).
I began world building Umarinaris (in my Ruarnon Trilogy) by considering the progress of western history and tweaking it. The first humans arrived from Earth during the Bronze Age. Umarinaris’ combines bronze and iron age technology and it has sailing ships like those of the western colonial era and monarchy and sexism. But feminism is on the rise, and nonbinary people are established. Multiple gods are worshipped, as are ancestors. There are deists (who believe the gods created the world but had no further impact upon it) and atheists. I’ve cherry picked features from different eras of western history, and written nonbinary people’s status in society speculatively. I invite you to cherry pick for or alternate your SFF world similarly, as we unpack many features of society below.
History
Is it written? Do cave paintings, frescoes or statues with engravings recount major events?
Do bards recite poems or songs of legends and myth?
Is history written by the winners (winning throne or religious leader claimant/ conquerers/ winning political ideology etc)? What lies does any group’s history tell? Will these be exposed in your novel?
Literature
You might not think of fantasy civilisations having pure fiction, as opposed to recalling myths and legends. But by the early second millennium BCE, hieroglyphics in ancient Egypt morphed into a linear script and stories, like fanciful tales of adventure to the mystical land of Punt (an actual trade location near the Red Sea) were written. So when your characters make references to people they admire, abhor or whose actions they are inspired by, are these references mythical, historical or fictional?
The Arts
Do roaming bards sing of the past, or bands of musicians travel? Or do the rich act as patrons to orchestras or bands? Will we find musicians serenading a feast scene, or are their marching bands in your world’s parades?
Do painters and sculptors have patrons who supply their materials? And perhaps provide them with board and meals, in exchange for favourable art of their patrons? (Like in Rome?) Or are the arts valued and paid for as civic entertainment by a republic or oligarchy, like in ancient Greece? Or can only the ruling class afford to employ artisans to build monuments, paint frescoes and proclaim their patrons beauty and great deeds to the world? (As was the case in ancient Egypt, where the arts differed in style and some critics would say degenerated in skill when the kingdom wasn’t united under a single ruler).
Will we see actors in your world? Are they travellers moving from inn to inn, or from one wealthy home to another to perform?
Do the arts portray and reinforce the values, ideals, myths and heroes of your cultures or their rulers?
Sciences
The meaning of the word ‘Science’ may vary a lot in your civilisations, depending on which era of scientific understanding or Dark Age superstition they parallel. But there are two areas of science I think very relevant to world-building —medicine/ anatomy, and natural science.
Anatomy
Human knowledge of what various internal organs are for, how the body works and how to treat wounds may depend on religious beliefs in your world. The belief in ancient Egypt that a physical body was required to house the spirit of the deceased meant important organs required to sustain life needed preservation after death. Dissection and mummification taught the Egyptians that the heart causes blood to circulate through the body and the basic functions of the lungs and kidneys. But they believed the heart was the body’s centre of emotional feeling and the seat of the mind, lacking an understanding of the brain.
So if your culture practices mummification or permits autopsies, does your world have at least a rudimentary understanding of most organs? Does it know that losing too much blood is fatal?
If you have a Dark Age civilisation where study of the human body is banned, you might have absurd notions like those of medieval Europe/ Roman hangovers. For example, that the four humours –blood, bile and white and black phlegm must be equally balanced for good health. Or that getting leaches to feed on the blood of a sick person will ‘purify’ their blood and ‘make them stronger’ (as oppose to weaken them from blood loss). If it suits your plot for people to die of medical complications/ suddenly, ignorant, superstitious beliefs and traditions about the body could be a handy plot device/ killer.
Medicine & Medical Procedures
Again, depending on how enlightened your civilisation is, some medical conditions may not plague characters as much as you think. For example, in ancient Sumer (a civilisation that began around six thousand years ago in modern day Iraq), physicians could remove cataracts. They had the knowledge, tools and skill (but alas not the anaesthetics). Your civilisation may be able to perform simple operations on people. But medical procedures may require a blow to the head or strong alcohol, if the opium poppy or its equivalent isn’t known/ doesn’t exist as an anaesthetic.
Whether soldiers survive battle wounds may depend less on medical procedures (stitches etc), and more on knowledge of hygiene. If, like medieval Europe your culture lacks Rome’s custom of bathing (or worse thinks water makes you vulnerable to sin), doesn’t keep wounds clean, or use alcohol for sterilising them, infections may be the biggest killer of soldiers after wars or of injured workers.
Medicines & Herbs
I mentioned opium already. It might be worth researching real-world herbs used for poultices, healing teas etc. Do women or ‘witches’ administer herbal remedies? Or is there an educated, enlightened society that trusts nature and researches it, studying anatomy and reads books to obtain medical knowledge?
You may have other plants which are useful too. As an Australian, I’m aware that the eucalyptus gum when crushed and inhaled can make it easier to breathe with asthma, or a cold. I was surprised to find eucalypts growing in Vietnam, where the Vietnamese use its oil for all sorts of things, including insect repellent. What medicinal or other uses can people put plants to in your world?
Another thing to consider is medical treatments that are the only known cure for an illness, but have disastrous side effects. Mercury is effective in treating syphilis, but not only can it kill you because it’s poison, it can also trigger hallucinations and delusions. Meanwhile, many plants are effective cures in small doses, but poisonous and even fatal in large doses, another plot device for accidental deaths or murder.
Religion & Culture
The Temple at Karnak/ Thebes, Egypt from my 2009 travels.
The first thing I’d consider about religion in a fantasy world is the role it plays. Is religion just collection of creation myths no one pays much attention to? (Like one civilisation in my Ruarnon Trilogy). Do people give offerings to the gods of the house, inanimate objects and abstract principles, and pray to them for guidance (as in pagan Rome). Will people try to divine the future from the stars, flights of birds or goat’s entrails? Does religion otherwise have little impact on daily life?
Do people in your world believe divinities, demons or magic are responsible for scientific occurrences they do not understand? Eg. pestilence, natural disasters, crop failure, human sicknesses? Is religion in your world an attempt to explain gaps in human knowledge?
Does religion mean ancestor worship? Or worship of the spirits believed to inhabit all natural things or of a pantheon of gods? Is any civilisation arrogant enough to proclaim they worship the ‘one true god’? Is anyone disaffected and atheist? Or do they accept that gods creating the world is a likely enough explanation, but see no divine impact in the world ever since (deist)?
Are differing religious identities a cause of war in your world? Or is it like the pagan world, in which each culture excepts that the others have different names for the sun god? And have different traditions and stories about the sun god, but everyone accepts that there IS a sun god? And he doesn’t have a dogma so no-one kills anyone in the name of dogma?
What is religion’s relationship with morality?
Does it have one?
If you have a pagan civilisation, ‘good religious practice’ may mean making offerings to the spirits as you trespass through their forest/ stream etc. In the western world, it wasn’t really until the last two thousand years BCE that personal religions, saviour gods and the idea a god had moral standards they expected you to adhere to personally A, existed, and B became popular. So while we may see religion and morality as inextricably linked today, they weren’t always, and they may not be in your world.
Does religion in your world have doctrines, and dogma?
Can people be shamed and publicly shunned for their ‘sins’? Can they be stoned to death or burnt at the stake as a heretic? Do people live their lives in fear of the judgement of a jealous, angry god who may send them to hell? Or do they have spells or means of tricking the gods who judge them, to avoid a second death and enter the afterlife (as they did in ancient Egypt)? Does religion prescribe what role people will play in life by gender or social caste? Does it suppress certain sexualities? Is it used to oppose racism or bolster it? Does it oppose slavery or legalise it?
Or do people have loose moral beliefs associated with their gods?
Do people try to live up to these beliefs to get closer to their god, and hope that will unite them with their god at death? (Like the mystery religions of western antiquity which often involved saviour gods, resurrection etc.)
Religion and the State?
What is religion’s relationship with the government? Do you have priest-kings, like the earliest civilisations of the ancient Near East? Or a Pope-like figure vying with medieval kings and queens to dominate hearts and minds and govern the life of a continent? A theocracy? Do priests/ diviners/ fortune tellers advise the rulers of your world?
Christianity dominated the west utterly for centuries, but at times South-East-Asia had Hindu rulers, a Buddhist empire and now it’s largely Muslim. A transition between religions may be a fascinating time to set your story. And like South-East-Asia, you could have two or more prominent major religions in one region, at the same time.
What is Religion’s Relationship With Science?
In ancient Greece, religion was fairly liberal. Worship of an entire pantheon of gods flourished alongside the birth of scientific study and theorising. The first theory of the atom was produced and the first rudimentary steam engine invented, though never utilised, because slave labour left no need for it. But even the ancient Greeks had a notion that the gods only wanted humanity to know so much. It tended to be philosophers who, when they questioned too deeply about the gods, were charged with ‘corrupting the youth’ (like Seneca) and censured by the state.
Christianity was more extreme, early Christians burning the greatest collection of literature in antiquity (the Library of Alexandria in Egypt). Even the bible was written in only Latin for centuries and only ranking members of the church were permitted to read it. (Yes, I blame Christianity and its mindset for the European Dark Ages as much as the fall of Rome). To what extent does religion ignore science, contradict or smother it or sponsor an intellectual dark age in your world?
Or do your gods intend for humanity to learn and develop? (Which is considered the path of salvation in my Timbalen Empire). If you have a pantheon, is for example, study of botany considered a form of respect, even communion with Mother Earth? Do learning and respect for divinities go hand in hand in your world?
History & Religion?
What does history say after your world’s religious creation myths? Does religion agree with history, or re-write it to conceal a rival religion/ sorcerous power/ a sect dismissed as heretics? Or did someone use religious texts to calculate that the world was 4000 years old and argue history that disagreed should be discarded? If your world has more of an ancient leaning, its culture may not have a clear distinction between history and myth or between science, religion and magic.
The Culture of death
Is there an afterlife? If so, how is the body prepared? Is there mummification? Do mortuary practices return the body to the embrace of a mother goddess via burial? To the sky gods via exposure? Or carry its embers to the sky gods with smoke from cremation?
If there is mummification, is it common to visit the site with offerings to nurture relatives in the afterlife? If cremation (or mummification because this did happen in Egypt in Late Antiquity) is the urn or mummy kept in or near the house so the deceased can partake in or witness family activities?
Or does the spirit of the deceased (as in Tarlah in my Ruarnon Trilogy) transfer to an image of the deceased by a ritual performed by a priest?
After death, can the deceased be prayed to for guidance? Or for the comfort of the mourners?
What’s the Afterlife Like?
If the deceased go to an afterlife, is it heaven? Hell? Or will the spirits of those judged by the gods as unworthy suffer a second, eternal death and be fed to a monster, as in ancient Egyptian mythology?
Do they ascend to the Pole stars like the Egyptian pharaohs (in one tradition)? Or join Re on his celestial journey through the sky to light the world by day, and through the underworld by night? Do warriors go to an eternal feast with the war god, as the Celts believed? Or can you envision your own afterlife inspired by any or none of these?
Does the deceased (as many ancient cultures seem to have believed), have the same social standing in the afterlife as in life? Or is their equality in the afterlife?
Is the deceased united with their deceased loved ones and a god or gods in the afterlife?
This is the last of my blog series on Worldbuilding. I hope it’s been helpful! If you missed any, they’re linked below.
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Further World Building Reading
Power & Conflictconsiders types of government, religious, technological or advisory powers, rebels and the ways any of the above could contribute to conflict in your world.
Geography considers how geography may influence everything from general and defensive architecture, to water supply, heating, farming and how geography may connect to religious beliefs, sacred spaces and magic.
Humanoid Life offers suggestions on physical things like clothing, food, work, pastimes, family life, legal status and opportunities may differ among social classes and offers food for thought on sexual and gender diversity.
As as an Aussie YA Fantasy author on Twitter, it didn’t take me long to bump into fellow Aussie and SFF author Nikky Lee. In this interview, Nikky tells us what draws her to writing YA, what drives her characters, the real-world influences on her world-building, and what she hopes readers will gain from reading her work.
Tell us a bit about you. Where’s home and what’s your life like outside writing?
Hi, I’m Nikky. While I was born and grew up in Perth, Western Australia on Whadjuk Noongar Country, I now reside in Auckland in Aotearoa New Zealand. I write all things speculative, from dark and epic fantasy through to dystopian futures, space opera and the occasional piece of horror. I also write a mix of short and long fiction.
Outside of creative writing, I work in marketing as a communications and content specialist for a market research agency. So anything with words usually goes through me, whether it’s a report for proofing or blogs, case studies, website copy and so on.
When I’m not writing, I’m an avid kayaker, swimmer and coffee lover.
What drew you to your genre/audience age?
I’ve always loved speculative fiction, I grew up with Narnia and Star Wars and those cemented my love of the genre. If it had magic or space battles I was there for it. As for writing short fiction, that development has been relatively recent. For the longest time, I struggled to write anything that wasn’t novel length. My ideas were too big and sprawling (and still often are). Then I stumbled upon a prompt for a submission that really sang to me and I thought I’d give it a go. From that I discovered short fiction is a fantastic way to experiment with style and tone and ever since then I’ve been hooked on writing short stories in addition to longer works.
What are some big themes your writing explores?
In my debut novel, The Rarkyn’s Familiar, the theme of what makes a monster a monster is very prevalent. Along with themes of friendship, found family and not judging by appearance or heresay. My shorter works have examined heaps of other themes, such as climate change and dealing with loss and grief (Dingo & Sister), corrupt people and gods in power (The Dead May Dance), and letting go of a loved one (Ram’s Revenge), to name a few.
What drives your point of view characters?
Good question! I’ll limit this to the characters of The Rarkyn’s Familiar as it’s my best known work so far. For Lyss, she’s haunted by the murder of her father and wants nothing more than to bring those responsible to justice. She’s practical and full of grit and determination to get what she wants, but the trauma she’s experienced has really shaken her. She’s often afraid and is constantly fighting to not succumb to that fear. However, once she meets Skaar, her priorities quickly shift to survival.
Skaar is the other main POV in the story, as a non-human character his worldview is different in many ways to the likes of Lyss and other human characters and yet surprisingly similar in other ways. Like Lyss, he has past traumas that haunt him. But after several years imprisoned at human hands, the tantalising hope of freedom is what drives him, along with the desire to survive.
How much do your point of view characters resemble or differ from you?
Hmm, this is a tough one. There’s a lot of me in Lyss, and I’ve taken inspiration from some of my personal journeys, particularly my mental health journey, to tell Lyss’s story (more about that here). There might be a bit of trait admiration at play as well where I give my POV characters traits I admire—resilience and resolve being chief among them, as well as a willingness to strive for might seem like impossible goals.
And there are probably resemblances that I’m not even aware of that only someone who knows me could spot. Stubbornness might be one 😉
Which real-world influences have contributed to your world building?)
In the case of The Rarkyn’s Familiar, its world building was inspired by a lot of fantasy that’s come before: Robin Hobb, Tamora Pierce and Hayao Mizakai’s Princess Mononoke for their fantastical creatures and immense landscapes, as well as Kentaro Miura’s Berserk, which was my first foray into grimdark fantasy and inspired elements of the Empire’s corrupt nature. I’ve blogged about it in more detail here.
Countless visits to the South Island of New Zealand has helped me dream up my mountain settings. As for the society and culture of the book, a couple of elective units in medieval and ancient history came in handy 🙂
For my other stories, Dingo & Sister was primarily inspired by a trip across the Nullarbor, an arid plain in Australia between Perth and Adelaide. Unbelievably hot (something like 47 degrees celsius outside) and red red sand. For other story settings, particularly those set near the coast, I’m lucky to have an abundance of water activity experiences to draw on (surfing, snorkelling, fishing, sailing and so on) from a childhood spent camping and holidaying all over the Australian coastline.
What do you gain from writing your books and what do you hope your readers will gain from them?
First and foremost, I write to entertain. My stories are a form of escapism for me and, I hope, for my readers too. While my work can delve into some heavy topics and I’m conscious about how I portray certain topics, I’ll prioritise entertainment over social commentary (though that’s not to say you can’t have both!). However, if I can make my world and characters feel real in the mind of my reader and sweep them away into lands of magic and wonder after a hard day at work, I consider that a win.
As for what I gain from writing, it’s mostly escapism, as I said earlier. But on occasion writing has helped me process something from the real world, be it a personal fear, an event, an issue I’m wrapping my head around, or a notion I’m simply coming to terms with. For example, Ram’s Revenge was a story that was partly me coming to terms with the fact that my grandmother wouldn’t be around for much longer. Of course, I usually don’t realise it at the time, only when I look back at it later.
Where can we find your books?
You can find my books online wherever good books are sold.
Nikky Lee is an award-winning author who grew up as a barefoot 90s kid in Perth, Western Australia on Whadjuk Noongar Country. She now lives in Aotearoa New Zealand with a husband, a dog and a couch potato cat. In her free time, she writes speculative fiction, often burning the candle at both ends to explore fantastic worlds, mine asteroids and meet wizards. She’s had over two dozen stories published in magazines, anthologies and on the radio.
Her short fiction has been shortlisted six times in the Aurealis Awards with her novelette Dingo & Sisterwinning the Best Young Adult Short Story and the Best Fantasy Novella categories in 2020. In 2021, she received a Ditmar Award for Best New Talent. Her debut novel, The Rarkyn’s Familiar, was released in 2022 and is the first of an epic fantasy trilogy about a girl bonded to a monster. You can connect with Nikky on: FacebookInstagaramTik TokTwitter
Related Reading
You’ll find more talk of fantasy characters, setting and world-building inspirations in:
G'day! I'm an Aussie (they/ them) who graduated from playing imaginary games in my extensive backyard to writing YA Fantasy. In between educating energetic, enthusiastic minds as excited about life as I am —kids— and adventures in Europe, North America, South-East Asia and locally, I enjoy writing adventures and epic conflicts for the young and young at heart.
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