Secondhand Gods created the Heavens and the Earth. But the Earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the Earth.
Yes, if you happen to be the theological sort, I just paraphrased Genesis 1:1-3. In fact, if you were to read the first chapter of Genesis (in any one of the multitude of Christian Bibles) you’d see, in microcosm, the act of true Worldbuilding.
Perhaps my blog should have started here, rather than with the creation of the animals, but I was working on a race last week, and it felt far more sensible to start there rather than here.
I’ve been reading a lot of Steven Savage’s work on Worldbuilding over at A Way With Worlds. Perhaps his best advice, and the advice I want to focus on today, is what your world really is. It is your primary character.
That isn’t to say that you need a sentient world hell-bent on eradicating the technological scourge of humanity (of course, if you did that, kudos). What Savage means when he talks about the world as a character is that it technically must exist before, during, and after your story.
The world is as thriving an entity as your heroes; it endures upheavals, lucid periods; it snows, rains, and grows, and without the world, your characters wouldn’t be able to do much of anything, let alone thwart the evil wizard Gargameglan. So, what is a wayward Worldbuilder to do? Quite a lot like making a fancy dinner for friends or family, you should do as much preparatory work in advance as possible.
The purpose of building your world is not to create a stage for anyone and everyone to act on; rather, you want to create a stage for your cast of characters to act on. While there is no such thing as too much background information, there is such a thing as wasting time. If it weren’t important to know who first pressed a half florin electrum coin, then I’d strongly recommend you don’t write twenty pages about the man’s eating habits on the Sabbath.
Savage wisely suggests you write only a little more than you will need to successfully create a world to work in, and to successfully provide yourself with some space for fun. Historical figures, background characters and “general knowledge” characters don’t need lengthy biographies if they will never be encountered except in the vernacular (that is, the half florin might be called an Aggie, because it was minted by Agrus Quinton Aquila).
This however does not stop you from creating brief, but fascinating, points of interest for your world. The Fjords of Temblus, Loch Modan, The Floating City of Venice; your characters may never visit these places, but they can easily be included as a fun addition just for you, and who knows, you might use them in the future.
I am currently integrating some of Steven Savage’s techniques into my own growing methodology for World Building. I am a fan of maps, a big fan of them in fact, as I think they provide the best basis for your world possible.
With a map of any size (the bigger the better) you can see your world, and for some of us, seeing is believing. Geography – and especially the geography of resources – can affect all sorts of factors in your world. Let us use a real world example to illustrate the point.
One of the “rewards” given to France after the First World War was the continually contested area of Alsace-Lorraine, a coal rich region on the border of France and Germany. Historically, Alsace-Lorraine has traded hands between Germany and France several times. What has this done to the people of the region? Would it be so important if it weren’t a resource rich region?
The answer to the second question is no. Alsace-Lorraine would have been a null point in the discourse of the Treaty of Versailles. More importantly, what has this done to the region?
If we were creating our storybook world, and created by fluke a country named France, would we say that it is homogenous in language, religion, culture, et cetera? You could say that and get away with it; all French people speak French, are Catholic, believe in life, liberty, and fraternity, and like Jerry Lewis. Fine, we won’t doubt you, the mighty Worldbuilder, in saying that.
However, it would be far more interesting to say that, in your fictional country of France, there is a region known as Alsace-Lorraine, who, due to conflicts over the years, has a divergent set of traits. Citizens of the province of Alsace-Lorraine are bilingual, speaking French and German, and celebrating some German holidays such as Oktoberfest.
The same could be said for regions in the southeast bordering Spain. Certain Moorish and Spanish influences over the last thousand years have certainly had their impact.
If you didn’t have a map of your world, you might not know where exactly nations grind against each other, or where they coexist peacefully. You might also lose track of things in one chapter stating that the Oil Fields of Penn are in the North, then several chapters later placing them in the south.
A well-designed (and it does not have to be perfect on the first try) map can be a great help to world building. Using Savage’s method, that is, creating enough information to be useful, I’m starting to pinprick spots on my world map (17”x22” or four A4 sheets of paper) and tell little stories about them. In the long run, this will strengthen my story and my world, making chatter, banter, and colloquialisms far more realistic, not to mention the value it will have in helping me track the progression of the story over geographic areas.
Creature Creation I - More than just scales and extra limbs
Designing aliens, monsters, and all many of diverse beasts, critters, and beings can be a daunting task. Indeed, the act of creation isn’t one to be taken lightly, because a poorly conceived anything in a story will quickly be noticed, dissected, and assaulted by your readers, players, or viewers.
Are these monsters and aliens just metaphors for humanity? There isn’t a single answer to that question, rather it is yes, it is no, and it is maybe. In many cases (the elves, dwarves, halflings, and dragons in many of the more popular fantasy series) these creatures are metaphors for aspects of humanity. Elves are arrogant, intelligent, naturists; dwarves represent our greed and lust, dragons are wise and ecclesiastical to the point of prophecy.
In other cases, like the Uruk’ha of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings or the Draconians of Weis & Hickman’s Dragonlance, these creatures are inhumane. They don’t just look like monsters, but their bloodlust, rage, and hate – without any compassion or love to temper it – are depicted as the worst parts of humanity.
Then you have the assortment of enigmatic creatures and races in all of fictiondom. All you need to do is think of something from Star Wars, Star Trek, or any number of genre specific stories for an alien or monster that is perfectly human (Aside from whiskers, jowls, and the occasional tail). That is, they are good and evil, capable of compassion and rage, greed and altruism, love and hate; these creatures are all mirrors of humanity, rather than metaphors of single human aspects.
It is these “humanesque” aliens and monsters that serve as the core of the speculative fiction megaverse. But how do the greats – the Asimovs, Heinliens, Tolkiens, Bradleys, and Gavriels – create such creatures? I suspect that they all have their own unique methodology – what person doesn’t? – But I also suspect that every unique methodology contains many similar elements to what I am starting to use.
There is a multitude of questions you need to ask as you create new and interesting races for your stories. Some questions might not need to be asked because you have answered them in your plot. If your story about a simple page recovering a mighty sword takes place on an Earth-type planet, then we can safely assume that your monsters breathe oxygen.
Or perhaps your story is about a dragon man hell-bent on saving his mate and child: well we know how those creatures reproduce, roughly.
Everything can be important, and no facet of your creations universe is useless. Ecology, the form and function of the beast, the gravity, atmosphere, number of suns, moons, and stars can have an effect on your creations. Would the werewolf be the same if Earth had two moons? Could star-crossed lovers really be star-crossed if our atmosphere was too dense to see the stars?
Creating brainless, savage monsters can be fun and easy, and usually a great test of one’s descriptive powers. We as readers are far more interested if your beasts are vividly imagined and described. Which one of the following do you like more:
I just invented the raawk (with a little inspiration from other sources) and as you can see, it helps in one’s writing to be descriptive. From the latter of the two exerpts, we know it is feline-like, has a lot of teeth, and drools like a dog, not to mention it is a cunning hunter. Plus we now know this world has two moons and at least one very dense forest. But do I need to say anything else about a raawk? Probably not, feline-like is enough for me, as its breeding and social habits won’t ever matter.
Of course, the creation of a sentient species adds an assortment of things to consider. Aside from things like form, function, environment and ecology, we must think of them as man-like, at least to the extent that we assume they possess similar cognitive functions as we do.
Are these people warlike or pacifists? Are they open-minded explorers or close-minded xenophobes? Bipedal, gelatinous, quadrupeds? Hairy or bald? Scales? How many eyes, arms, legs and ears? Tentacles?
All of that physical gobbly goop is easy to imagine, we did it when we were scared of the monster in our closet, and as adults I bet we can do it even better. What will be a more difficult task is the more adult task of society and even more importantly, language.
Language reflects society and culture. The Inuit have more words for snow than sand, and the Japanese have a much more diverse language of social etiquette than Europeans. When creating another race of people, you don’t always have to do what Tolkien did (He did, after all, create languages for his characters) but you must take into account your characters language, you’d be surprised how useful it is.
Let us assume you are making a warrior clan of Northmen; big, bearded behemoths wielding axes and maces the size of small trees. They live in small, matriarchal societies (women rule the hearth because men are always at war), there are at least a dozen words for females (all of them highly respectful) but even more telling, there are fifty words for war. Lets look at some of these made-up words for a new people:
That’s really just what I could come up with off the top of my head, but as you can see, this sort of language (and when used effectively, readers will begin to learn the dialect) illustrates that this clan is not composed of crude warmongers, but rather, men and women of strength and savage honour.
Let’s continue looking at this warrior clan. We’ll call them the Anad’Cad, Sons of the God Ojdnir and his lover Celestia of the Noble Stag. They live on the perimeter of the Northern steppes and the Black Forests of Nir, where their women forage for berries and fish for large tlak salmon, and the men hunt the wilds for vrakbeast. Everything is used, nothing is wasted.
Annually, the clans of the region meet at the Ok Ruuv Pa, or Stone of Ceremony. It was said to be placed there by Ojdnir himself. While this month long festival seems to be just a way to assert the dominance of one clan over another, it is actually more than that.
Men and women meet, fall in love, and are married by the Shamans in Stag headdresses, craftsman exchange new methods, and news from across the land is shared.
How does courtship work amongst the Anad’Cad? Women have the final say in all matters of love, and any man found to force himself on a woman is first castrated then set adrift on the great river Grooyt towards the Western Sea.
In situations where courtship progresses, the young man must offer an assortment of goods. The bride’s family quickly rejects items of wealth, as they prefer items of prestige. Vrakbeast horns, Peli eggs, and gems from the Underdeep are all considered proof of a man’s strength and valour, and are deemed worthy prizes to prove the value of a woman.
I could go on and on about the Anad’Cad of the Black Forest of Nir. I’ve yet to consider their dress, their stories, or how they treat outsiders. But the Anad’Cad is at least half made now.
I treat the process organically, describing one event in my mind, and then moving from there. Once I decided they were warriors, a matriarchal society made sense. Which meant women having power in the courtship made sense, etc etc. I could have just as easily made it a patriarchal society with absentee males, but that doesn’t make much sense.
The best thing I can suggest is finding your own method, but when creating sentients, always wear your anthropologist’s hat. Even if it is an impossibly strange species (the Gelatinous blobs of Ceti Alpha Nine perhaps) the anthropological method can be used to create some of the strangest things.
Are these monsters and aliens just metaphors for humanity? There isn’t a single answer to that question, rather it is yes, it is no, and it is maybe. In many cases (the elves, dwarves, halflings, and dragons in many of the more popular fantasy series) these creatures are metaphors for aspects of humanity. Elves are arrogant, intelligent, naturists; dwarves represent our greed and lust, dragons are wise and ecclesiastical to the point of prophecy.
In other cases, like the Uruk’ha of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings or the Draconians of Weis & Hickman’s Dragonlance, these creatures are inhumane. They don’t just look like monsters, but their bloodlust, rage, and hate – without any compassion or love to temper it – are depicted as the worst parts of humanity.
Then you have the assortment of enigmatic creatures and races in all of fictiondom. All you need to do is think of something from Star Wars, Star Trek, or any number of genre specific stories for an alien or monster that is perfectly human (Aside from whiskers, jowls, and the occasional tail). That is, they are good and evil, capable of compassion and rage, greed and altruism, love and hate; these creatures are all mirrors of humanity, rather than metaphors of single human aspects.
It is these “humanesque” aliens and monsters that serve as the core of the speculative fiction megaverse. But how do the greats – the Asimovs, Heinliens, Tolkiens, Bradleys, and Gavriels – create such creatures? I suspect that they all have their own unique methodology – what person doesn’t? – But I also suspect that every unique methodology contains many similar elements to what I am starting to use.
There is a multitude of questions you need to ask as you create new and interesting races for your stories. Some questions might not need to be asked because you have answered them in your plot. If your story about a simple page recovering a mighty sword takes place on an Earth-type planet, then we can safely assume that your monsters breathe oxygen.
Or perhaps your story is about a dragon man hell-bent on saving his mate and child: well we know how those creatures reproduce, roughly.
Everything can be important, and no facet of your creations universe is useless. Ecology, the form and function of the beast, the gravity, atmosphere, number of suns, moons, and stars can have an effect on your creations. Would the werewolf be the same if Earth had two moons? Could star-crossed lovers really be star-crossed if our atmosphere was too dense to see the stars?
Creating brainless, savage monsters can be fun and easy, and usually a great test of one’s descriptive powers. We as readers are far more interested if your beasts are vividly imagined and described. Which one of the following do you like more:
The long-eared raawk ran out of the bushes, its forked tail ridged for balance, and began to bite Prince Valiant in the neck.
Or
The two half moons hung at their zeniths, streaks of silver and gold light filtering through the dense canopy of the forest. The long-ears of the raawk were swept back as it slunk amongst the underbrush, its forked tail ridged. Valiant watched from the centre of the clearing, waiting until suddenly the giant cat sprang, a trail of saliva in the air as it shot towards Valiant, toothy, gaping maw aimed for his jugular and a killing blow.
Or
The two half moons hung at their zeniths, streaks of silver and gold light filtering through the dense canopy of the forest. The long-ears of the raawk were swept back as it slunk amongst the underbrush, its forked tail ridged. Valiant watched from the centre of the clearing, waiting until suddenly the giant cat sprang, a trail of saliva in the air as it shot towards Valiant, toothy, gaping maw aimed for his jugular and a killing blow.
I just invented the raawk (with a little inspiration from other sources) and as you can see, it helps in one’s writing to be descriptive. From the latter of the two exerpts, we know it is feline-like, has a lot of teeth, and drools like a dog, not to mention it is a cunning hunter. Plus we now know this world has two moons and at least one very dense forest. But do I need to say anything else about a raawk? Probably not, feline-like is enough for me, as its breeding and social habits won’t ever matter.
Of course, the creation of a sentient species adds an assortment of things to consider. Aside from things like form, function, environment and ecology, we must think of them as man-like, at least to the extent that we assume they possess similar cognitive functions as we do.
Are these people warlike or pacifists? Are they open-minded explorers or close-minded xenophobes? Bipedal, gelatinous, quadrupeds? Hairy or bald? Scales? How many eyes, arms, legs and ears? Tentacles?
All of that physical gobbly goop is easy to imagine, we did it when we were scared of the monster in our closet, and as adults I bet we can do it even better. What will be a more difficult task is the more adult task of society and even more importantly, language.
Language reflects society and culture. The Inuit have more words for snow than sand, and the Japanese have a much more diverse language of social etiquette than Europeans. When creating another race of people, you don’t always have to do what Tolkien did (He did, after all, create languages for his characters) but you must take into account your characters language, you’d be surprised how useful it is.
Let us assume you are making a warrior clan of Northmen; big, bearded behemoths wielding axes and maces the size of small trees. They live in small, matriarchal societies (women rule the hearth because men are always at war), there are at least a dozen words for females (all of them highly respectful) but even more telling, there are fifty words for war. Lets look at some of these made-up words for a new people:
- Ruuv: a small clan war usually fought with non-lethal weapons to assert dominance.
- Ruuv pa: ceremonial clan fighting, similar to the Olympics.
- Croov: Honourable duel
- Vas Cetro: War of Attrition
- Vas Ruu: Mercenary war, used for paid combat.
- Sheb Va: A senseless war
- Sheb Va Cru: A war leader who has no tactical sensibility
That’s really just what I could come up with off the top of my head, but as you can see, this sort of language (and when used effectively, readers will begin to learn the dialect) illustrates that this clan is not composed of crude warmongers, but rather, men and women of strength and savage honour.
Let’s continue looking at this warrior clan. We’ll call them the Anad’Cad, Sons of the God Ojdnir and his lover Celestia of the Noble Stag. They live on the perimeter of the Northern steppes and the Black Forests of Nir, where their women forage for berries and fish for large tlak salmon, and the men hunt the wilds for vrakbeast. Everything is used, nothing is wasted.
Annually, the clans of the region meet at the Ok Ruuv Pa, or Stone of Ceremony. It was said to be placed there by Ojdnir himself. While this month long festival seems to be just a way to assert the dominance of one clan over another, it is actually more than that.
Men and women meet, fall in love, and are married by the Shamans in Stag headdresses, craftsman exchange new methods, and news from across the land is shared.
How does courtship work amongst the Anad’Cad? Women have the final say in all matters of love, and any man found to force himself on a woman is first castrated then set adrift on the great river Grooyt towards the Western Sea.
In situations where courtship progresses, the young man must offer an assortment of goods. The bride’s family quickly rejects items of wealth, as they prefer items of prestige. Vrakbeast horns, Peli eggs, and gems from the Underdeep are all considered proof of a man’s strength and valour, and are deemed worthy prizes to prove the value of a woman.
I could go on and on about the Anad’Cad of the Black Forest of Nir. I’ve yet to consider their dress, their stories, or how they treat outsiders. But the Anad’Cad is at least half made now.
I treat the process organically, describing one event in my mind, and then moving from there. Once I decided they were warriors, a matriarchal society made sense. Which meant women having power in the courtship made sense, etc etc. I could have just as easily made it a patriarchal society with absentee males, but that doesn’t make much sense.
The best thing I can suggest is finding your own method, but when creating sentients, always wear your anthropologist’s hat. Even if it is an impossibly strange species (the Gelatinous blobs of Ceti Alpha Nine perhaps) the anthropological method can be used to create some of the strangest things.
Welcome to Secondhand Gods, A Handy Legend
I thought it would be wise to add a handy little legend for this blog, as I've compartmentalized my work in my mind, and I know that compartmentalization might not be obvious to all readers. Every post will start with a predefined title, followed by a small description of the content. The predefined titles are described in the legend below (in no particular order), and will assist in sorting/searching by labels in the future.
- Distilled Brain Sweat: research essays designed to interpret (and comment on) content I have found regarding worldbuilding as it pertains to the writing of fiction and creation of RPG (Roleplaying Game) worlds. The latter, of course, can be a great device for determining the interest level in a given universe.
- Pure Brain Sweat: highly informal essays/articles, the result of my own deranged imagination and procedures for creating worlds for my own stories and games.
- (Civilized) Beastiary: articles about the multitudes of creatures in my universe, from the smallest domesticated pets to the largest, scariest, most vile monsters.
- Pinpoint Dossiers: articles about the various gangs, cabals, religions, and governments of my universe, as well as spotlights on specific "legendary" individuals.
- Cartographical Society: think of this as a Frommer's Guide to my universe, covering various cities, towns, landmarks, space stations, et cetera et al.
- Lexicon Nouveau: Every culture has its own language, and within each culture are numerous subcultures with variations, slangs, and idioms unique to them. No worldbuilder can create a universe without giving its inhabitants a certain degree of linguistic flair.
- Games Galore: Using the 3.0-3.5 Wizards of the Coast Gaming systems (DnD, D20, SW) I'll probably begin, for fun, building a platform specifically for my work.
Welcome to Secondhand Gods, a Worldbuilder's Blog
When Henry David Thoreau said that “you cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one,” he was talking about the character of a person, the mettle and merit of a man in this world (as I am sure that in the mid-nineteenth century he would have only concerned himself with the mettle of a man). I doubt that Thoreau would have imagined that this simple statement – an obvious truth, whose content is indisputable – would be bent to the whims of Secondhand Gods like you and I.
For speculative fiction writers (that is, writers in horror, science fiction, and fantasy genres and sub genres) the act of Worldbuilding can be compared to the mythologies of Greece and Rome. We are the lame god Hephaestus (Vulcan for those with a more Latin inclination), dreadfully grotesque compared to his brothers and sisters on Mount Olympus, hammering at metals and through his strength of will, creating art.
That is exactly what Worldbuilders make: handcrafted (or perhaps braincrafted?) art. Worldbuilding covers a broad swath of the preparatory work towards great storytelling, and most authors in the speculative fiction genres have already, in some way large or small, built Worlds.
J.R.R. Tolkien – considered the Godfather of Fantasy writers – spent an estimated twelve years working on the Lord of the Rings and the Silmarillion (for those who are unaware, the Silmarillion was intended to be Volume II in the Lord of the Rings Saga). That’s TWELVE YEARS or FOUR-THOUSAND THREE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY DAYS! In that time, Tolkien not only wrote Lord of the Rings and the Silmarillion, but also wrote several volumes of back-story and history, much of which is told through smaller stories and myth (a method one would expect from a philologist such as Tolkien).
Every author has his or her own peculiar method. Robert A. Heinlein was known to write several hundred pages of notes for his major works. In the recent publication Variable Star written by Spider Robinson and Robert A. Heinlein (posthumous), Robinson actually wrote the entire novel based on a large stack of notebooks and loose-leaf paper given to him by the Heinlein estate.
It was notebooks and loose-leaf like this that created stories like Stranger in a Strange Land, Time Enough for Love and the entirety of Heinlein’s “Future History” story arc.
I personally haven’t found my own “style” of Worldbuilding. In my youth I unknowingly replicated the Tolkien methodology (I say unknowingly because I didn’t read Lord of the Rings until I was 18), working on a rather juvenile piece of fantasy fiction fraught with clichés, weak plot, and two-dimensional characters.
In my later years, I’ve tried the Heinlein methodology, with word documents piling up on my desktop, containing enough pages to fill several novellas themselves. None of it, however, has ever worked out. My Worldbuilding hasn’t taken off, and I’ve yet to figure out why.
So now I will put myself on this wacky thing we call the Internet. Weekly (probably Fridays) I’ll talk about various aspects of Worldbuilding, along with other intrinsic components of storytelling, based on the research I’m doing; I’ll share the methods of others, as well as expound on some of my own ideas.
Throughout the rest of the week, we’ll just have fun. I intend on posting things from my most recent speculative fiction project, just to see how good these new methods of Worldbuilding really are. You’ll see how I do just about everything I guess, from building Kingdoms and Principalities to deciding if the Fiefdom of Generica should have fjords on the coast.
In advance, because I am an obnoxious man who never remembers to say Thank You, let me just say, Thank you. I hope that my readers are willing to bear with me, learn with me, and perhaps we can share together our experiences, our methods, and our ideas. Creation is not a Solo project, no matter what the Bible says.
For speculative fiction writers (that is, writers in horror, science fiction, and fantasy genres and sub genres) the act of Worldbuilding can be compared to the mythologies of Greece and Rome. We are the lame god Hephaestus (Vulcan for those with a more Latin inclination), dreadfully grotesque compared to his brothers and sisters on Mount Olympus, hammering at metals and through his strength of will, creating art.
That is exactly what Worldbuilders make: handcrafted (or perhaps braincrafted?) art. Worldbuilding covers a broad swath of the preparatory work towards great storytelling, and most authors in the speculative fiction genres have already, in some way large or small, built Worlds.
J.R.R. Tolkien – considered the Godfather of Fantasy writers – spent an estimated twelve years working on the Lord of the Rings and the Silmarillion (for those who are unaware, the Silmarillion was intended to be Volume II in the Lord of the Rings Saga). That’s TWELVE YEARS or FOUR-THOUSAND THREE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY DAYS! In that time, Tolkien not only wrote Lord of the Rings and the Silmarillion, but also wrote several volumes of back-story and history, much of which is told through smaller stories and myth (a method one would expect from a philologist such as Tolkien).
Every author has his or her own peculiar method. Robert A. Heinlein was known to write several hundred pages of notes for his major works. In the recent publication Variable Star written by Spider Robinson and Robert A. Heinlein (posthumous), Robinson actually wrote the entire novel based on a large stack of notebooks and loose-leaf paper given to him by the Heinlein estate.
It was notebooks and loose-leaf like this that created stories like Stranger in a Strange Land, Time Enough for Love and the entirety of Heinlein’s “Future History” story arc.
I personally haven’t found my own “style” of Worldbuilding. In my youth I unknowingly replicated the Tolkien methodology (I say unknowingly because I didn’t read Lord of the Rings until I was 18), working on a rather juvenile piece of fantasy fiction fraught with clichés, weak plot, and two-dimensional characters.
In my later years, I’ve tried the Heinlein methodology, with word documents piling up on my desktop, containing enough pages to fill several novellas themselves. None of it, however, has ever worked out. My Worldbuilding hasn’t taken off, and I’ve yet to figure out why.
So now I will put myself on this wacky thing we call the Internet. Weekly (probably Fridays) I’ll talk about various aspects of Worldbuilding, along with other intrinsic components of storytelling, based on the research I’m doing; I’ll share the methods of others, as well as expound on some of my own ideas.
Throughout the rest of the week, we’ll just have fun. I intend on posting things from my most recent speculative fiction project, just to see how good these new methods of Worldbuilding really are. You’ll see how I do just about everything I guess, from building Kingdoms and Principalities to deciding if the Fiefdom of Generica should have fjords on the coast.
In advance, because I am an obnoxious man who never remembers to say Thank You, let me just say, Thank you. I hope that my readers are willing to bear with me, learn with me, and perhaps we can share together our experiences, our methods, and our ideas. Creation is not a Solo project, no matter what the Bible says.
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