Steve’s Book List 11/2/2020

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

My sites:

Fiction

I’ve been returning to fiction with a techno-fantasy setting of several planets orbiting a star called Avenoth.  Take a typical fantasy world of magic and gods, and let it evolve into the space age and internet age . . .

  • A Bridge To The Quiet Planet – Two future teachers of Techno-Magical safety find trying to earn their credentials hunting odd artifacts backfires when you’re hired to put some back . . . on a planet where gods go to die!

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:

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 . . .

Why I Wrote It: Religion and Worldbuilding

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

I’d like to say I wrote this one with noble intentions. But the main intention was “save me from badly worldbuild religions.” This is a personal thing for me.

As a youth I was fascinated by theology. When tested for career inclinations, Minister was in my top five. I probably would have ended up a Unitarian Minister under different conditions.

Theology is amazing, and is really a broad wrapper on a variety of things. It encompasses vast pantheons of gods and cultural traditions. It can be about powerful psychological and mystical processes and practices. In the end, it’s about humanity’s place in the universe and trying to make sense of it all. Well, that, and the legions of a-holes that often mess it up.

You can imagine why I took to it. It was probably one of the reasons I did a BS in Psychology.

But also I would see religions created in fiction and RPGs and they could be as fascinating as our world’s – or they could be derived from our world in obvious and unoriginal ways. One of my pet peeves about fictional worlds is when it’s clear that parts of our world were dropped into something not our world. I saw it too much.

I also get why it happens. We want our fictional religions to be relatable. We might not know how to make interesting fictional religion. We’re used to others “lifting and dropping” our world into other worlds. Also how many people really are interested in theology or get much exposure to it.

So? I wrote a book on it.

As much as I got annoyed by badly made fictional religions, I knew why they happened. I also had that theology interest so I could make a series of questions to help people.

It’s a weird thing really. Annoyed by something, then realizing why it happened, then trying to solve for it. But it looks like a book people responded to, and I’m glad I could help them out.

Steven Savage

Creative Distribution

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

“There’s no honor in an unread book” I once noted. A creative person, in general, wants people to experience their works. That’s the goal, be it to entertain or to inspire or to pass time.

In time, I have realized there is a greater reason to spread our works far and wide – people need creative works. People need to be inspired, frightened, to laugh, and to think new thoughts. This helps us grow, helps us be who we are – and it helps us make our own creative works. Creativity is like nutrition for our ever-growing mind.

Thus it is the responsibility of the creative person to spread their works as wide as possible, in as many forms as possible, and as accessible as possible. Yet this is daunting because there are many opportunities, and many competitors.

Let me give you some inspiration.

You’re a creative person – you write, draw, cosplay, or whatever. Turn that creativity into a way to spread your work far and wide. I don’t know what you should do because I’m NOT you, and you’ve got your own unique creative edge to spread your work.

You just need to figure what it is. I mean you were able to write, draw, or whatever? If you can dream up whatever you dreamed up you can figure out a way to spread your work around.

For instance, myself part of my creativity is planning, analysis, and so on. I seek patterns, build plans and structures, and can visualize workflows. So I have a marketing plan with reviews, budgets, and so on.

You might be a writer who makes great ad copy, so you’re buying and promoting ads. Or an artist that can make great giveaways. Or a social butterfly that can enthrall people with online talks and so on.

I don’t know what your ability to spread your work is – you just don’t yet

But then again once you didn’t have any creative work to spread around and somehow you got that . . .

Steven Savage