Saturday, September 17, 2011

Changes (The Non-Jim Butcher Kind)! Call the Prince Reagent, have him talk with a Fujiwara regent, and then go find an alchemist

Okay, this has been coming for a while, but I'm going to slightly be shifting the content on my blog (and in some cases already have).

I'll still going to be doing weekly interviews and guest blogs from other authors. I think this is a great way to help out both authors and readers.

In addition, starting next week, I'm going to try and be efficient and combine two of my writing-relating activities together: blogging and research.

So, starting next week, I'm starting three new weekly features. On Mondays, I'll be talking about different magical systems. I'm a very non-magical person and don't believe in any magic (except the magic of compound interest), but in the course of writing various fantasy and paranormal stories I've become fascinated by the varied types of magical beliefs and systems that people have thought up. I intend to focus both on historical magical systems and those that have only appeared in the pages of novels. I intend to call this 'Magical Mondays'. What can I say, I like alliteration.

On Thursdays, I will be sharing tidbits about Georgian and Regency England (Mr. Beard's Regency Tour). On Sundays, I will be sharing tidbits about Heian Japan as part of my "The Age of Tranquility and Peace" (a rough literal translation of Heian jidai, not necessarily an objective statement about the entire period).

These entries will usually be modest in size, but I hope to communicate at least some small bit of useful information in them.

I'll no longer be participating in SFFS or SSS due to time constraints, though I'll still be trying to stop by many of the blogs I routinely visit to comment, but it will probably take me the entire week to make it through those.

I hope, if you're interested in any of those topics, you'll stop by.

7 comments:

Pippa Jay said...

Sorry to hear that you're leaving SFFSat but I understand completely about time restraints. Best of luck with it. :)

Heather Marsten said...

I am wondering which magical traditions. I am in the process of writing a memoir, part of which covers various occult groups I belonged to. The occult grups begin a few chapters in and continue through most of what I've written. The first chapters cover abuse I received. If you are a member of Critique Circle, my novel is posted under "Tell Me What He Did." In the chapters I give some examples of ceremonies and magical exercises in the teaching coven I belonged with, as well as other pagan practices. Might be helpful.
Heather

J.A. Beard said...

Thanks, Pippa.

Heather,

All sorts of different things. Part of the point of the exercise is also to encourage me to keep up with my own research to aid in my own fiction, so in the beginning I'll be hitting the low-hanging fruit (i.e., stuff I'm more familiar with) then moving onto things I'm less familiar with and will require more active research on my part.

Initially, I'm going to covering magical traditions of history then later delving into things purely in fiction.

I'll check out your chapters.

Lindsay said...

Sorry to see you're not going to be posting on SSS. You'll be missed.

J.A. Beard said...

I'll still be commenting on a lot of the SSS like I regularly do. Just probably won't be putting stuff up for a while. Besides time issue, I've become adverse lately to putting up WIPs for a number of reasons, and I have nothing but WIPs. :)

Cate Masters said...

I'm sorry to hear you're bowing out of SSS. I'll miss your snippets! But I will definitely stop by.

CherylAnne Ham said...

I'm looking forward to your thoughts on magic systems. I like the sound of Magical Mondays - even though in my life, Mondays are far from magical. LOL :D