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Steve’s Book Update 6/1/2022

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I write a lot and have quite a few books.  So now and then I post a roundup of them for interested parties!

The Way With Worlds Series

This is what I do a lot of – writing on worldbuilding!.  You can find all of my books at www.WayWithWorlds.com! 

The core books of the series will help you get going:

  • Way With Worlds Book 1 – Discusses my philosophy of worldbuilding and world creation essentials.
  • Way With Worlds Book 2 – Looks at common subjects of worldbuilding like conflicts in your setting, skills for being a good worldbuilder, and more!

When you need to focus on specifics of worldbuilding, I have an ever-growing series of deep dive minibooks.  Each provides fifty questions with additional exercises and ideas to help you focus on one subject important to you!

The current subjects are:

Fiction

Take a typical fantasy world – and then let it evolve into the information age.  Welcome to the solar system of Avenoth, where gods use email, demons were banished to a distant planet, and science and sorcery fling people across worlds . . .

  • A Bridge To The Quiet Planet – Two future teachers of Techno-Magical safety find trying to earn their credentials hunting odd artifacts backfires when they’re hired to put some back . . . on a planet where gods go to die!
  • A School of Many Futures – The crew is back, and finding having secrets and keeping them isn’t the same thing! Unfortunately they also find “very normal” is a cover for “anything but” . . .

Creativity

I’m the kind of person that studies how creativity works, and I’ve distilled my findings and advice into some helpful books!

  • The Power Of Creative Paths – Explores my theories of the Five Types of Creativity, how you can find yours, and how to expand your creative skills to use more Types of Creativity.
  • Agile Creativity – I take the Agile Manifesto, a guide to adaptable project development, and show how it can help creatives improve their work – and stay organized without being overwhelmed.
  • The Art of The Brainstorm Book – A quick guide to using a simple notebook to improve brainstorming, reduce the stress around having new ideas, and prioritize your latest inspirations.
  • Chance’s Muse – I take everything I learned at Seventh Sanctum and my love of random tables and charts and detail how randomness can produce inspiration!

Careers

Being a “Professional Geek” is what I do – I turned my interests into a career and have been doing my best to turn that into advice.  The following books are my ways of helping out!

  • Fan To Pro – My “flagship” book on using hobbies and interests in your career – and not always in ways you’d think!
  • Skill Portability – A quick guide to how to move skills from one job to another, or even from hobbies into your job.  Try out my “DARE” system and asses your abilities!
  • Resume Plus – A guide to jazzing up a resume, sometimes to extreme measures.
  • Epic Resume Go! – Make a resume a creative act so it’s both better and more enjoyable to make!
  • Quest For Employment – Where I distill down my job search experiences and ways to take the search further.
  • Cosplay, Costuming, and Careers – An interview-driven book about ways to leverage cosplay interests to help your career!
  • Fanart, Fanartists, and Careers – My second interview-driven book about ways to leverage fanart to help your career!
  • Convention Career Connection – A system for coming up with good career panels for conventions!

Culture

  • Her Eternal Moonlight – My co-author Bonnie and I analyze the impact Sailor Moon had on women’s lives when it first came to North America.  Based on a series of interviews, there’s a lot to analyze here, and surprisingly consistent themes . . .

My Sites

Steve’s Update 5/30/2022

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

Brutal few weeks with all the bad stuff in the news, but there’s progress being made!

The Way With Worlds series: Not doing anything on this until Q3 for the final book in the “Disaster series.” The cover conversion went on hold a bit for a rough few weeks, still plan to have the covers (if not the books) ready this year.

“Think Agile, Write Better”: I have the outline back from people, and I’ve re-edited it! It’s really improved and I will start writing this week or next! Thanks to everyone who helped!

The Seventh Sanctum rewrite: I’m now doing test launches – which is a bit of a pain because I’m dealing with some directory and access juggling. I need that so I can switch over and have fallback. On the other hand check out the beta at www.PageOfGenerators.com.

Social Media Realignment: With the future of Twitter still unpredictable, this is going in fits and starts. I’ve got a big list of things I want to do, which probably means “sit down for a week as my major focus and do them.”

The Compendium of Writing Advice: Going to set this aside until the Sanctum is launched I think. Just too much on my mind.

Steven Savage

Grinding On In Hope

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

2022 seems to be a line of unmitigated tragedy.  COVID continues to rampage, Russia invades Ukraine, the economy teeters, the news is full of bullshit, and there are multiple school shootings.  Even though we see hope in Ukraine, the other issues wear on us.

I’m sure you feel that grinding awfulness, and in time you want to give up.  I can offer you this advice – don’t.  Take a rest, take a break, get away, but don’t give up.

The one thing we can do is keep going in the face of all this awfulness.  We can fight for what matters, we can stick to what’s meaningful to us, we can not quit.  Quitting is the one thing that guarantees a worse world.

This isn’t just a moral statement, it’s a statement about meaning in our lives.  When we give up then we’re no longer ourselves, we’re a shadow waiting for harsh light to erase us.  In motion there is hope that what matters to us can continue to matter, to sustain, to grow, to return.  We need this motion not just to be good people but to stay sane.

Humans are a process.  When we stop, we’re just not people, just not ourselves.

So as hard as things are now – and I know they’re hard – don’t give up.  Keep going, even if “going” involves a rest for now.  Keep being you – that you, that process, might just get us out of this mess, or at least you.  Until we get out of this, at least you’ll be yourself when you’re in motion.

Steven Savage