Inkshares Community discussion

I want to announce a call for submissions for a series I'd like to launch on my blog starting next month. It is call Fantasy Worlds, and it is an annex series to World Builders. If you are a fantasy writer with a detailed fantasy world and would like to write an article about your world, with great pictures, maps, or drawings, then I'd like to see your submission!

Unlike World Builders, posts for this series are up to the contributing guests to write, in whatever format they would like, and I will be selecting the ones I feel are most suitable for my epic fantasy-based audience. Strongest submissions for me would be:

-based on a sweeping epic fantasy world (I am also open to world-heavy fantasy, and scifi with extensive world building tantamount to the freedom of epic fantasy, and alternative history worlds)
-an easy-to follow, well-written article
-great organization and use of headers / categories / section breaks
-compelling use of detail and anecdotes that illustrate the world well
-great use of images in the text; I am particularly looking for maps, pictures that could fit the world, or sketches / diagrams

You can choose whatever format you'd like, be it encyclopedic, or a historian's chronicles, or the story of the world told like a narrative. Whatever you do, this is an opportunity to intrigue readers about your fantasy world, to tell your world like a mini-story, as at the end of the post I'll ask you to quickly summarize your book and link readers to it.

Past World Builders guests who write epic fantasy or fantasy heavy with world building, I'm particularly interested in submissions from you, however you don't have to be a past guest or even a scheduled guest to get in on this. The above criterion is what I will use to decide which articles are best for this series.

I look forward to your submissions. Please, if you have any questions about this email me at johnrobinrt@gmail.com and I can tell you more about the series, or we can discuss some more in case you'd like to contribute but would like suggestions. I'd like to help as many authors with richly envisioned worlds get some exposure on my epic fantasy-based blog, so even though this is submission-based, I am by no means closed to discussion and collaboration that might precede you writing an article that fits in with what I'm looking for.

I look forward to hearing from you, and the next adventure on this exciting journey!

Well, if sci-if is okay...then maybe you need to change the series name to the worlds of speculative fiction. Just a thought.

Anyway, I would be pretty interested. I can take a few picture of my notes, but I haven't designed my worldbuilding notes for photogenic reasons, so it might look a bit...lame. While since my book is based in the modern world, I feel like this would kind of feel like cheating if it's just a PSed version of the world map.

So you think my book would work?

Hi Yicheng,

The reason I am streamlining this series is because I want to focus on the epic fantasy audience to better brand my blog / platform for what I write. Specifically, I want epic fantasy worlds, however I am open to other worlds that might step outside the fantasy genre, just as long as they are richly detailed and exotic enough not to be like our real world. World Builders is a broader series because I embrace that world building as a process can exist in any speculative fiction genre. However, I want to keep World Builders as a broader series, and Fantasy Worlds to be a specific follow-up series to target epic fantasy / fantasy with heavy world building (occasionally, science fiction is the world envisioned is exotic enough -- Brian Guthrie's Rise comes to mind).

You'd have to tell me more about your world and the details of it for me to know if it would fit or not. Don't force it, though -- if you don't think it's a fit for Fantasy Worlds then not a problem. I think this will benefit most the fantasy folks more than any other, as you'll be entering a mostly-fantasy-loving audience with these posts.

I'm going to try to put something both concise and complete together. I tend to limit my focus when writing a book, but my core world has enough background info to fill its own book. I'll not ramble on here, but I'll probably shoot you an email with a short synopsis within a week or so. The downside I have is maps. I have plenty drawn, but all in pencil which does not show up well in pictures/scans. I may try my hand at a bit of inking/coloring, but those are not my strong point.

Thomas, this sounds exciting! Take your time to prepare it. I'm looking forward to sharing well-written, well-presented articles that I can basically copy and paste into a post, with some careful formatting and linking. This will be awesome to share, so I'm looking forward to what comes in.

I'm still working on submitting your original interview request, although it's been on the back-burner given others that are/were much closer. I would like to take some time to submit something for this, although I'm worried about finding enough time to write up anything worthwhile.

I'm thinking of doing something from the perspective of a "chronicler". Their a rather unique group rarely touched on in my book, whose sole purpose as an organization is to sift through the aftermath of "the Collapse" and piece together the events preceding, as well as following it.

The organization dispatches members throughout the known world to inspect ancient ruins, in the hopes of gathering enough pieces to reconfigure the jigsaw that was their world before everything shattered to pieces. Kubara Yussif is one of these Chroniclers, and his tale would highlight the political aspirations of Alethia, the conflicts of the various tribes and border-clans neighboring the Empire, and the ecological-decay of the land.

Bryon, this sounds great -- and I saw your email last night. It's going to be radio silence from me for the next 2 days as I'm under the gun with an editing project due by the end of tomorrow, but I will have a look and get back to you soon.

John wrote: "Bryon, this sounds great -- and I saw your email last night. It's going to be radio silence from me for the next 2 days as I'm under the gun with an editing project due by the end of tomorrow, but ..."

(GUYS! John's going on radio silence! Let's get him a bunch of new orders to surprise him when he comes back!!! Anyone? Anyone?!?!)

Cara wrote: "John wrote: "Bryon, this sounds great -- and I saw your email last night. It's going to be radio silence from me for the next 2 days as I'm under the gun with an editing project due by the end of t..."

YESSSSSS (sorry, did I not say that quiet enough? Did I ruin the surprise?)

So YOU GUYS are the reason I got more than 20 pre-orders over the weekend. Sheesh, both of you -- quit it I mean seriously.

:=)

p.s. I do hope my reverse psychology intentions are clear...

I would be interested in this as well. Currently I'm working on some art work for a couple of other authors so that has been taking most of my time, but after, I'm going to get back into my stuff. When I joined Inkshares I was already creating a border for my map, so I just need to finish that. There are a few excerpts of poetry at the beginning of each book, and in my mind I was thinking it was taken from either a song or some historical account about my character's lives and how they came to be who they were born to be... Did that even make sense ha ha... Anyway, maybe I could format it that way, someone telling the story of these two who eventually become legendary heroes. I'll think on it a bit, let me know if your interested. I could start working on something to have by November, which is when my campaign ends and I might be looking into putting my book on create space, so anywhere I can advertise would be great ;)