Lita is so delighted when Gentle Readers drop by her blog posts from earlier years. Here are the top five most visited classic posts in 2015.
FIFTH PLACE: Harpies Are Misunderstood
Madam Harpy, our Winged Sister of the Sky. Who did a disservice to this magical creature, turning her from a beautiful woman with feathery wings, into a fearsome hag?
Hesiod, a Greek oral poet from the same time period as Homer, described harpies as women with fetching hair. Pottery showed them as lovely damsels with wings. Just what Lita was looking for, pretty bird gals having chronic Good Hair Days. More…
FOURTH PLACE: Fantasy Boy of Winter: Jack Frost
Burr, it’s wintertime outside of Lita’s castle here in the northern realms. Someone painted icy filigree on the windows. Let’s bundle up, go outside, and meet the artist.
Say hello to handsome Jack Frost, winter’s fantasy boy. This magician embodies lacy window paintings, trees draped with sparkling snow, and crystalline sculptures made of ice. He tosses about sheets of sleet as if they were billowing linens on a clothesline. More…
THIRD PLACE: 6 Critical Elements for Fantasy World Building (Part 3)
This is the third of a 3-part blog post about building rich fantasy worlds to immerse your readers. In part 1 we looked at two “big picture” elements: maps and politics. Part 2 was a “medium” view about wimpy food and eavesdropping.
This time we’ll talk about a couple of “detail” topics: the decorative apostrophe, and why it’s no fun for wizards to just wave their wands and rule the world. More…
SECOND PLACE: 6 Critical Elements for Fantasy World Building (Part 2)
This is the second of a 3-part blog post about building rich fantasy worlds to immerse your readers. In part 1 we looked at two “big picture” elements in building a fantasy world: maps and politics.
Today we will take a “medium-sized” view and see why meat and grog are wimpy. We’ll also learn how to speak in tongues. More…
FIRST PLACE: 6 Critical Elements for Fantasy World Building (Part 1)
World-building techniques have always fascinated me. High Fantasy and Epic Fantasy books were my delight as a young reader. I poured over the maps on the book’s end papers, studied every entry in the glossary in the back, even marveled over the lengthy character name lists in the front.
When it comes to creating fantasy worlds for my own fiction, I’m a writer who knows the details of the characters’ environment. I must have their vitae close at hand so I know them well enough to write about their struggles. It also doesn’t hurt to speak their language and follow the latest fads for their clothing styles. More…
Here are more for the curious minded:
Lita Burke 
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