From Grathew's Desk

Hello everyone, it's been a fortnight. I've been getting up to a lot of things, many of them currently behind the curtain. I've started a test for Project Ghost, am working though my old notes on Thunderfall and Slonminma, have started outlining a new series for the gazette, and have some news from the friends, then we will go onto the subscriber portion.

First things first Project Ghost is getting a test story. I don't know if I am going to post it publicly at this moment. It is in that awkward spot where I could go and submit it to contests, journals, magazines that kind of thing. Yet is a good bit of worldbuilding, and the kind of story I want to post to the Gazette to use as example for the worldbuilding in practice. As is it would make a good example of how to do a naming language, and how to bake culture into names. I'm going to send it to my beta group first and see what they think. I'm pleased with what I've gotten done so far. It's currently titled The Vulpine and will be in the same world. As I aspire to do with most of my works.

Moving on to Thunderfall, I'm working though it. As it's in the Noah Bannon universe and going to be plot relevant sooner rather than later. It should be ready by the next dispatch from my desk, I know I've said that before. I've been dragged into a few priority projects that delayed it, I should be able to talk about one of those projects sooner rather than later, however it's still keep it behind the curtain.

Revisiting my notes on Slonminma I've found a lot of interesting bits and pieces that I'd forgotten about. For example my units of measurement, I knew I had them just didn't remember where I put them. I've also found my musings on a second moon. Which is good fun. I like the idea of extra moons, it makes things different from Earth which Slonminma isn't. I've also dug up my early history, and mythology of Slonminma. I feel like I need to redo my theological basis of the entire project (again) as it is so tied to the core of the world. I am going to be starting my exploration of my notes and current worldbuilding soon. It's going to take a while as I need to go over the notes, and I need to turn it into something more than just a digital notebook.

Moving on to the new ideas. I'm thinking of doing a micro-fiction or flash fiction, depending on your bars, on a regular basis. Where I do very short bits of fiction, probably tied into my various other projects. I'm also thinking about doing a my gripes on a topic. With my solutions to said gripes. It might be an infrequent series as I'd want to at least make a worksheet for said topic.

Now on to WORLD NEWS or when I go on to tell you what other things have happened in my corner of the internet:

First off Episode 3 of the conspiring Lemurs is live. You can find it on Spotify. It should be embedded below.

Next up one of the people who shed some light on my early worldbuilding journey is back from quite a break. For those looking for another way to worldbuild and more information about historical clothing go check out Mariah Pattie. Mariah started with questions on clothing and then evolved it into a full world which should now be getting stories. Her return to worldbuilding can be found here or embedded below:

I will say her comments on avians are slightly different than mine, the contrast will be interesting once I get around to talking about mine.

Lastly, and a little late, Fulcrum, my podcasting mentor, put out a new episode of her podcast diving into the villains of fiction this episode was Darth Plagueis. If you're interested in character deep dives you should check her out or hopefully embedded here.

With that I am going to move on to the subscriber portion of this From Grathew's Desk.

I don't really have much more to add with this dispatch from my desk.

I've been doing a lot of things, but most of it isn't supper interesting. I was going to do another Slonminma refactor update however tech issues, means I didn't get much done on that front. These next two weeks should be better, as I've solved the tech issues.

I've also finally started to solve some of my "sticky note" math. These are equations that help keep the math nerds from pointing out "That's wrong" and instead arguing about the pros v cons of what you did v what they think is better. I'm starting with trains, as trains are misunderstood. I know Slonminma is going to need some. I've got a lot of space, and a good amount of stuff that needs to go from one place to another, couple that with the train from Chasing a Letter and thus the issue. I have a good set of math that works, although I'll save the rant about trains for a later date. It will likely be my first if I do My Gripes With, because man a lot of worldbuilders and story tellers don't understand what trains actually do.

I'll probably do more in that math for Sci-Fi as Sci-Fi needs more small simple math that will 'solve' the issues with a lot of the issues that people have with the genre.

For the "Story telling is lying to people for fun and profit!" crowd how far do you want to go to avoid mentioning any hard numbers? This goes for anything, from the price of a cheeseburger and fries, to the amount of food and water aboard your sailing ship, to the number of missiles for the starship stranded on the far side of the galaxy. Instead of making it a case of "If used well you gain a little, if used poorly you end up loosing a lot." Often pointing to Star Trek: Voyager and how they handled the torpedoes. If you haven't seen the video:

Now I think it's a case of writers needing to stick to their worldbuilding. But I'll digress before I break out the soapbox. Instead leaving that it is often better to know more than it is to know less, as then one can use hard facts of their reality to support their story.

Tangent aside; coming up with sticky note sized math, and the rational for behind that math, will help make stories feel real. Therefore more believable. This believability not only sells the world but immerses the audience and, at least in my experience, makes things more memorable.

With that I will leave you with a question: What would you like to see math for?