Please join the IWSG Book Club today on Goodreads for two short discussions about the two books we featured in the month of July. There are still 3 days left in this month so there’s no rush. We are hosting 3 short questions for each book we featured and encourage you to share your reviews and or thoughts. Discussions will remain open indefinitely, so stop by anytime, even if you haven’t read the book(s).
This post contains affiliate links. If you click through to make a purchase, I may make a small commission at no additional cost to you. Any amount I make goes towards my dream to host a book fair in Hampton Roads, VA. Please see my About page for more details. Thank you for your support.
Reaching For Normal (Bloo Moose #1) by Jemi Fraser. Please click the image below to join the short discussion.
Thank you for taking the time to read this post. If you like it let me know and share it with others. See you next time, Toi Thomas. #thetoiboxofwords #blacklivesmatter
Created and hosted by the Ninja himself, Alex J. Cavanaugh, the Insecure Writers Support Group posts the 1st Wednesday of every month. Click hereto learn more or sign up.
This post contains affiliate links. If you click through to make a purchase, I may make a small commission at no additional cost to you. Any amount I make goes towards my dream to host a book fair in Hampton Roads, VA. Please see my About page for more details. Thank you for your support.
Optional Monthly Question: If you could live in any book world, which one would you choose?
This is so tough! There are so many book worlds I adore. But… Let me be clear. There are book worlds I really enjoy and love how they are put together, but I would never want to visit them. Pretty much any historical novel taking place in, or inspired by, a time in which black people were enslaved, I’m not going. Even some post-American Civil Rights stories aren’t ideal for me. With that said, there are dystopian futures you wouldn’t catch me in either, but I still love reading those books.
Here are a few book worlds I wouldn’t mind visiting.
L. Frank Baum’s Wizard of OZ, not Gregory Maguire’s Wicked (love the series, though).
Maguire’s Corner from the series by Heather M. Gardner.
The future of Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, the Oasis sounds really cool.
I wouldn’t mind being friends with the MCs of the Disaster Crime series by Chrys Fey, but I’m never traveling with them.
The world of the Lunar Chronicles has its ups and downs, but by the end, I’d totally visit.
Neverland by J.M. Barrie is a place I’ve read enough about that I would do okay on a short visit but will not be taking up residence.
I’ve thought it would be cool to hang out with characters from the Mark of Nexus by Carrie Butler, but again, just for a while.
Living with toons could be cool or tiring but Who Censored Roger Rabbit, to which the movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit is based on, is definitely a place I’d like to visit at least once.
Here’s where I could possibly live.
Ellen Jacob’s Coconut Cove where the Mollie McGhie series takes place, but I’d make sure that Mollie was never the last person to see me (the buddy system will always be in effect).
The future world of These Alien Skies by C.T. Rwizi.
Tinselville, the world of the Bad Fairy by Elaine Kaye sounds pretty sweet. I already deal with hurricanes where I live so I could learn how to prepare for twisties.
Oh, and Wakanda, from the Marvel world of the Black Panther.
Hope it wasn’t too much for you.
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IWSG BOOK CLUB ON GOODREADS
Member Spotlights
#iwsgbookclub
The books we’ve chosen to spotlight in the month of July are Magic at Midnight by Ronel Janse van Vuuren (Amazon.com & Bookshop.org) and Reaching For Normal (Bloo Moose #1) by Jemi Fraser (Amazon.com). Please check these out and consider giving one or both of these a read this month. If you’re not up for reading them, no worries, you can still help spread some love for these publications and or participate in the book club activities.
Feel free to share this image on social media to help spread the word.
I’m putting off helpful tips for today to let you know that some minor changes are coming to the book club. There will be a full announcement next month in the newsletter, here, and also on the IWSG blog page. For now, just know that we will continue to spotlight books by members, but we will also start highlighting a craft book each month.
COMING IN AUGUST 2022!
There will be a few other minor changes that are in line with our current schedule of weekly festivities, so I hope you joinin on the fun.
Reminder: Here’s our spotlight schedule.
IWSG blog list 1-50 = Feb, Jun, Oct
IWSG blog list 51-100 = Mar, Jul, Nov
IWSG blog list 101+ = Jan, May, Sep (IWSG Anthologies)
IWSG Registry = Apr, Aug, Dec
Remember, if you are not currently on the IWSG blog hop list and don’t plan to join, the registry is the only way for your books to have a chance to be spotlighted by the book club. If you are on the blog hop list, please don’t join the registry. We want to be fair and give everyone an opportunity to be featured, which means some of us will have to wait our turns, including me (the book club admin) and the co-mods.
Please click this hyperlink to fill out the form to be added to the IWSG Book Club Spotlight Registry, and please help us spread the word.
Now, on to the personal updates.
Physical Therapy is costly and doesn’t always give you results, but US doctors will not give you any additional treatment until they suck as much money as they can out of you in $20 increments as possible. I’m so ready to just give up and consign myself to living with pain for the rest of my life. People do it every day. I’m not so special as to be spared this inconvenience of aging.
I’m keeping myself busy. I’ve submitted another short story while continuing to work on my ongoing projects. I hit some walls with my illustration process, but I finally climbed over them. I’m excited about the next WIP update I’ll be sharing. I’ve made, very small, but some progress with most of my current projects.
I’m continuing to grow my YouTube channel and am working on a new audio podcast. So far, guests are really excited about the idea of not being on camera. I seriously had no idea so many people are sooo camera shy. Oh, and I have several events planned for the Fall. I will be putting myself out there and trying to make things happen, but more on that later.
Have you ever heard of someone having a blog tour when they weren’t releasing a book? I’ve been toying with the idea of having a tour to promote all my picture books? What do you think? Good or bad idea? Suggestions? I’m all ears.
Here’s the latest on my YouTube series, The Read Local Show (Hampton Roads, VA, USA) and The Read All Over Show (global). I’ve been having so much fun with this.
Click here to visit other IWSG blogs and sites to receive and share more inspiration and support. (This month, I’m #30).
Thank you for taking the time to read this post. If you like it let me know and share it with others. See you next time, Toi Thomas. #thetoiboxofwords #blacklivesmatter
Click image to see more books in the Deathgate Cycle.
I’ve read Fantasy since a very young age and one of the wonderful discoveries of my young reading days was the series. Fantasy writing involves a lot of world building and setting up ‘rules’ of the society, but more importantly, the reader as well as the writer often falls in love with an imaginary world and a series allows both to continue to visit these Fantasy realms in our imagination.
Some of my early loves were Anne McCaffrey’s Pern and Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Darkover. I was fascinated by the laws of Physics and how they were gently warped in Roger Zelazny’s Amber. Some worlds were less of a joy to visit, such as the challenging worlds conquered by Michael Moorcock’s Eternal Champion series heroes and the prison world of the Deathgate Cycle by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. Even these worlds embraced the fantastic and stretched the imagination into the far reaches of possibility. The seedy streets of Thieves World and the subculture of vampires in Anne Rice’s novels that began with Interview With the Vampire allowed the reader to adventure in dark and dangerous realms from the safety of their favourite reading chair.
I first became a published writer in the old traditional way in the 1980’s, but I was writing in a non-fiction genre and there was a part of me that always wanted to write in my own Fantasy world. I made an attempt once or twice to formulate an imaginary world and found that it couldn’t be forced. I had written a lot of fiction in high school, but as much as my Mind, Body, Spirit books flowed easily, my inspirations for fiction had become fragmented during many years of my life when I was travelling a lot and experiencing different aspects of real life.
It was something from real life that eventually sparked the seed of a new Fantasy realm. George Bush II was about to be re-elected *cough* and I had dipped my toe into activist groups in an attempt to start a worldwide protest movement that would reflect the atmosphere of 1969. I found that modern activist groups mostly worked separately and each had their own agenda, so co-ordinating anything after the effects of the ‘me’ generation of the 1980’s was effectively impossible. While contemplating how things should be rather than how they are, a line of dialogue entered my mind.
“We are not like you. We do not glory in having power over our own kind. Or imagining that we do.” ~Haghuf, Dance of the Goblins
It wasn’t something that a human was likely to say to another human, so in my mind the speaker became a goblin and suddenly an idea for a whole society, a Shamanistic subculture of goblins was born. Ten minutes later I was busy scribbling and when I stopped, chapter one was finished. I threw in some magicians for the goblins to interact with and they took over as the ruling class and suddenly, a whole new Fantasy world had effectively laid itself out for me.
During the course of writing the first book, the second and third books became notes files. There were things I wanted to follow up in subsequent generations, but I decided I would definitely stop at three. A series that goes on too long can weigh heavy on a reader. As much as I enjoyed Deathgate Cycle, I was very anxious for it to finish in the last few books. However, Darkover and Anne Rice’s Vampire books had transcended the sequential series by expanding through stand alone books. These worlds can be dipped in and out of without any need for sequence. My answer to this was to work towards a book of short stories related to my goblin world, Meat For the Storytelling. At this stage I have story notes to fill two volumes, but the stories that have been released to date can be read at http://jaqdhawkins.wordpress.com/.
When I finish ten of them, I will bundle them into the first collection and offer it at minimal price. How long it will go one to further volumes will be decided by the goblins. As long as I still have need to visit their world, the short stories will make a convenient arena to fill in pieces of back story or new adventures that reveal more detail about the societies that make up the series.
If you are writing about a Fantasy world, don’t feel that you have to put everything into a first book. Let it unfold in stages so that both you and your readers can enjoy the thrill of discovery at every point along the way. To build a world begins with a basic landscape and a few rules. The rest will fall into place as you write. Once you have established your own world, side novels or stories can go on for as long as someone, especially the writer, wants to return just one more time to experience this special realm of your imagination.
Thank you for taking the time to read this post. If you like it let me know and share it with others. See you next time, Toi Thomas. #thetoiboxofwords
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