When you’re world building for a story or novel, you need to figure out how magic works. The coffee shop writers chat about how to build something coherent, something that makes sense, and the pondering of magic that doesn’t get in the way of a story. Or how magic can become a story. And how red coffee is the best coffee.
Mentions from Episode 36:
- Steve Brust‘s Dragaera – Sorcery vs Witchcraft
- Katharine Kerr’s Dweomer – Latest version in Sword of Fire
- Ursula Vernon/T. Kingfisher
- David Eddings
- Who wrote the Q episodes on Star Trek? We call them out!
- Dragonlance books
- Ars Magica – best RPG magic system according to Jeannie
- WhiteWolf novels
- Nightlife RPG
- Devon Monk’s Ordinary Magic – the Allie Beckstrom stuff
- Carol Wolf – that “Tower must equal well” remark comes from her book
- Chthonic magic
- Patrick Ness is that author Karen couldn’t think of
- Charlie Stross’ computational thaumaturgy is the Laundry Files
- Roger Zelazny – A Night in the Lonesome October
- Dead of Light by Chaz
- John’s fave magic – Alys Rasmussen in The Labyrinth Gate
- The same book by Kate Elliott, her other nom de plume (because Jeannie is difficult)
- Greg Stafford’s Glorantha
- Chaz’ favorite – Patricia McKillip’s Riddle Master trilogy
- Dave loves the tech of Star Wars as Magic.
- Karen loves Witch World by Andre Norton
- Jeannie’s fave for Fantasy that is actually Sci Fi – Sheri Tepper’s True Game series (Jeannie says read Maven first, if you want chronological. But do as you like.)
- Jeannie’s fave pure magic world is Zelazny’s Amber series
What we want: An app that works with Kindle or other device reading electronica – if you hate it or want to throw it across the room for being terrible, you tap three fingers in a (Dun dun dun duuuuuuun) pattern. You get the sound of shattering glass, the downloaded book is removed from your phone/tablet, a 1-star “I hated it and launched it through a window” rating in your name is applied on Amazon.