Christmas Around my Imagination

Merry Christmas!

Okay, first off, to celebrate the holiday season, I have free books. (No surprise there, I'm sure, since I always have free books for Christmas.) Every single one of my short stories are free on kindle through to at least Friday, and a few extend through to Sunday as well. And, TODAY ONLY, The Ankulen is free. Just click the image below, or my amazon tab at the top of the page, and you can find all these wonderful books.

Okay, second, since I'm very nice, I'm going to treat you guys to some worldbuilding from several of my worlds. Christmas style. Now, as much as I love holidays in my own life, but for some strange reason, I'm frequently negligent about including them in my writing. (Because that means I have to keep track of a calender, and my brain just isn't that organized ... if you know what I mean.) However, I do have a few worlds with some version of the gift-giving holiday season, so I'll share those.

Via Pinterest

First of all, we have the Rowa. There, they celebrate the Month of Blessings. As the name suggests, it lasts a whole month, and it is a combination of Christmas and Thanksgiving, and contains a lot of medieval tradition. This is the time of year when they've finished gathering any and all of their crops, and they take the time to thank Yshew for his providence. There's quite a bit of feasting over the course of the month, as they are making sure than any and all perishables are consumed before they spoil. The Rowans are generally nice all year round, but this month especially so. Everyone goes out of their way to help each other, and to share the blessings that Yshew has heaped upon them. It's generally everyone's favorite part of the year.

This is one of the few holiday's that has actually gotten into a book. I've not actually experimented with any of the other holidays, and they're still just theories in my head. Good theories though. I quite like them.

Via Pinterest

I've actually done some pretty good plotting for Bookania's holiday, and I've known about it for about two years now. It's called the Turning of the Page, and is a combination of Christmas, New Years, and Hanukkah. The festival lasts a week, and each day has a different focus, and I'm not sure what all of them are. The last day, however, is for turning over a new leaf, so to speak. Any and all graduations take place this day, most knighting ceremonies take place this day, and most girls chose this day to declare themselves of marriageable age. Gifts are given throughout the week, it's a most joyous occasion. It had been my intention to write a short story about this, but Water Princess, Fire Prince kinda took over my life over the last few weeks.

By the way, the girl pictured here is Rhine, the Cloud Sprite in charge of frost and snow. I actually have all ten of the Cloud Sprites well developed, and I meant to have another one of them show up in Kingdom, but it didn't happen. I will have that particular one make an appearance in book 4, though.

Via Pinterest

Speaking of a world that's taken over my life and all that good stuff. (That reminds me, I forgot to mention that I finished WPFP two days ago. 136,000 words. Now I'm plunging into book 2 because ... I want to have it finished by the time I release WPFP.) I actually didn't know what sort of Christmas they had there until today, and I'm still pretty sketchy on all of the details. I do know that theirs is on the first day of the year, which is in ... hang on a moment, I need to go consult my calendar ... Which is also the first day of summer. They celebrate not only the new year, but the creation of Rizkaland itself. (Because, at the moment, I'm only a thousand years into Rizkan history, they haven't had their Sacrifice yet. One of the three auspicious moments of histories where every world is aligned perfectly. That's a topic for another day.) They give gifts, but that's about all I know. When they crossed it in WPFP, they were in the middle of a war, and Clara and Andrew were in Amber's clutches ... either that or inside the Mountain. I need to work on my calendar. They have ten-month years and eight-week days, and their years are 365 days (exactly, they don't have leap year), but I haven't worked out anything else. I need to sit down with a word processor and set up a graph for this. Anyone know a good FREE program where I can make calendars for fantasy worlds?

I really like this picture by the way, which I found just the other day. You see, I believe I've mentioned that Jeptha was originally a giraffe, and then I changed it to a Jaguar? Well, I wasn't liking that, either, and I didn't want to go with the obvious lion, and I needed something that could be intimidating, so a lamb was out ... I was actually considering an eagle. So I took this issue to my mom, and we talked it out, and we decided that Jeptha was something like a griffon, but not quite. (Hum ... just had a thought, what if I changed Jeptha's name to Alphego? I've not been quite comfortable with Jeptha for a few months now ... I like Alphego, though ... shall have to sit on that one. Alphego's Hill ...) The body of a lion, the wings and head of an eagle, solid white, the body covered with lamb's wool, the head and wings with the feathers of a dove. And then I came across this picture the other day and I was like that's IT.

Anyways, have a merry Christmas, and don't fall off the page. (Robin's personal greeting for the Turning of the Page.)