…or: The Making of the Year of the God-Fox Cover, Book One This week I’ve been working frantically getting materials for the launch of my latest webcomic, Year of the God-Fox, ready. One of these materials was the cover for Book One. Though the comic will be update one chapter at a time, I need to have …
Last night I read an article on The Mary Sue that got me surprisingly upset. It inspired this tweet from my alter-ego, Agent Elrond: Please read this article about lack of female villains: themarysue.com/on-female-vill… And then this page from Angeldevil: fav.me/d5kk95v — Agent Elrond (@agentelrond42) June 7, 2013 Now, if you go read that article you’ll …
<-Back to Index <-Previous Chapter THE PEDESTRIAN’S GUIDE TO WRITING HORSES 7: Further Reading Aside from research, it is a good idea to read some books where the author got their horses right. My favorite example is The Horse and His Boy by C. S. Lewis. Even though the horses are Narnian Talking Animals, they are …
<-Back to Index <-Previous Chapter THE PEDESTRIAN’S GUIDE TO WRITING HORSES 6: Illness and Injury First, a basic Cover My Back announcement: I am not a vet. I have twenty-odd years of experience with horses and I’ve seen a lot of things in that time, but I do not have the training, the skills, or …
<-Back to Index <-Previous Chapter THE PEDESTRIAN’S GUIDE TO WRITING HORSES 5: Care and Maintenance Horses require a great deal of work, especially if you want to use them in your Quest to Defeat the Dark Lord. The easiest way to care for a horse is to leave it out on a grass pasture with …
<–Back to Index <-Previous Chapter THE PEDESTRIAN’S GUIDE TO WRITING HORSES 4: Practicality Let me make one thing clear: Horses are NOT bicycles. As you may have learned from the previous chapters, horses are large, unpredictable, and opinionated. They are also surprisingly injury-prone (see Chapter 6: Illness and Injury). All this makes them (by modern …
<-Back to Index <-Previous Chapter THE PEDESTRIAN’S GUIDE TO WRITING HORSES 3: Personality The idea of the loyal mount is not a myth. Horses are, in their way, as loyal as dogs—but at the same time so unlike dogs that when they are depicted as such I get very upset. If cats are independent …
<–Back to Index <–Previous Chapter THE PEDESTRIAN’S GUIDE TO WRITING HORSES 2: Physicality The thing that most people notice when they meet a real life horse for the first time, and the thing that a lot of writers who have never met a horse get wrong, is their size. Horses are big animals. They are …
<–Back to Index THE PEDESTRIAN’S GUIDE TO WRITING HORSES 1: Terminology The world of horses carries a language of its own which can seem confusing to an outsider. Let me start by saying that I think terminology is the least important thing to get right (as long as your mechanics are solid and I know …
HORSES are of a breed unique to Fantasyland. They are capable of galloping full-tilt all day without rest. Sometimes they do not require food or water. They never cast shoes, go lame, or put their hooves down holes, except when Management deems it necessary, as when the forces of the DARK LORD are only half …