I’m Back, Baby!

Hi there! I have returned from my wedding and honeymoon. The wedding went off perfectly, and the honeymoon was wonderful. My new husband (still feels weird to say that) and I returned Wednesday afternoon. Today I am trying to get caught up on the laundry and prepare for work.

I don’t have any pictures on my camera from the wedding (since, you know, I was IN the wedding) but I will show you some pictures of the area up in Gatlinburg, Tennessee where we got married and stayed for most of our honeymoon. On our way back into Georgia we stopped by a quaint town called Helen, which was made to resemble a Bavarian village. We had German Potato salad, and Spaetzle, and knotwurst, and all kinds of awesome German food.

We visited the aquarium right there in Gatlinburg, and we loafed around in our beautiful cabin, and did some sightseeing in Helen, but I also brought writing stuff with me. I know, I am terrible. But my husband and I both like to spend time just sitting around, so I knew I would I would have some free time. I didn’t work on a book, but I did play around with Awkwords a lot. It’s a word generator my friend Lena told me about. I use it to generate a word pool for my constructed languages (called conlangs for short).

I write urban fantasy and fantasy. Some people who write fantasy, like yours truly, enjoy making up a fake language (or two…or three…) in order to make the world seem more realistic, and have an internal sense of order to the names of the characters and cities.

You don’t have to make up a new language, or a skeleton of one, in order to make your fantasy novel work. On the contrary, I have read plenty of fantasy novels that established a realistic setting without using a conlang. But I personally enjoy making up languages, so it’s something I do for the worlds I am making from scratch.

I had a great time. I will start posting again on a regular basis starting Monday, even though the end of the month might get a little crazy, since I am moving.