Gabriele

Like we need more plotbunnies hopping around in a writing related thread. And here I thought they graviatate to Brandon and leave us in peace.

The first three were a fun enough read (I picked them up years ago) but they are heavy on romance.

If you like historical fiction, too, you should check out Sharon Kay Penman's books. She's written about Richard III and several books dealing with our favourite dysfunctional family besides the Tudors: the Plantagenets aks the devil's brood.

The historical fantasy novels by Katherine Kurtz (Deryni series) and Judith Tarr (The Hound and the Falcon, etc.) are worth checking out, or rather, hunting down because most of the stuff is unfortunately out of print, though most of Tarr's books are avaliable as ebooks.

If you want an intricate multi-book series, try Janny Wurts' Mistwraith books. Kate Elliott's Crown of Stars series is quite fun, too. A bit more SciFi-ish is the Coldfire trilogy by C.S. Friedmann, with fae powers of an alternate earth planet. I loved Lois MacMaster Bujold's Curse of Chalion and its - standaloneish - sequels (and by the everstorm, write the last two in that series already. Me wants ).

I'm not doing that well with the camps, either (November is usually better and last year I even won, yay) but I can't resist playing. I blame the German regional forum on the Nano site.

Anyone going to participate in the Nano July Camp?

I'm waiting for the paperback. Seriously, right now the hardcover is 20% more expensive than the much larger Words of Radiance. That's highway robbery.

Jim Hines' goblins are fun, though. I love the Masters of Rome series (I got the Roman bug myself pretty bad and write in that setting as well ). And if you like that one the Kushiel books mentioned in the other thread should work fine for you. They got all the political intrigues and sex, too. Have you tried Dorothy Dunnett? Not for the faint hearted; her books are incredibly complex and take some time getting into, but the reward are 14 books worth of an intelligent, fun read.

I loved the first trilogy. But be warned, under that 'coming of age veering into an epic plot with all sorts of intrigues and some war'-story lurks a fair bit of bdsm/sex. I don't mind sex if it's well written and significant to the story, which is the case here since the MC is a courtesan, but if you're uncomfortable with on screen sex, even tastefully described, I'd not recommend the books.

I loved Gardens of the Moon. Yeah, the rest of the series, too. Malazan even kicked out A Song of Ice and Fire from the second spot of my Favourite Fantasy list. (The first is taken by Lord of the Rings ever since I first read that.)

So I found the two books grinning at me in a bookstore (yep, the English version in a German store; that's what you get when living in a university town) with a nice red low price sign. Somehow, they now sit on my TBR pile. Sneaked in there when I wasn't looking, I suspect.

Why can't we pick more than one option? I voted Historical Fiction, but there's an equal amount of Fantasy books on my shelves. Some SciFi and Adventure, the odd YA, but no Romance, Thriller or Mystery stuff. Biographies of course, but I count those as non fiction I also have a pretty large collection of works by Dostoyevsky, Balzac, George Eliot, Thomas Mann and a whole bunch of other literary writers. Yes, my tastes are all over the place. I started reading the big literature books at an early age. My parents luckily never screened my reading but were always there to answer questions (even the ones I had after reading Lady Chatterley, lol). But I also read YA historical fiction like Rosemary Sutcliff or the German Barbara Bartos-Höppner (seriously, her books should be translated into English) and that got me hooked on hist fic pretty bad. Sir Walter Scott and Dumas didn't exactly help, either. I came to Fantasy (1) comparably late when I read Lord of the Rings at university and then hunted down more of that. Though it was the time of Eddings, Brooks and their ilk, so I burned out on the genre for a time until I found Tad William's Memory, Sorrow and Thorn and eventually A Song of Ice and Fire and other more 'adult' Fantasy. Now I'm back full swing. 1) What is traditionally considered Fantasy, that is. There are Fantasy elements in a number of older books never labeled as such.

Well, a universe that has black holes and is bent in the 4th dimension is allowed to have some crazy spots for planets to hang out, or in. Thanks for the clarification.

But what about the whole gravitation thingmajig? Would that poor planet not get terribly confused about which sun's gravitation field to follow?

Well, Cathair and the Battle of Nechtansmere are back on the stove to simmer a bit more. I'll better concentrate on those two WiPs where I actually made some progress recently (I even won Nano with the Sichelstein saga, first time ever I managed that). The Saga of House Sichelstein (proabably a trilogy: Forged at the Fighting, Survivors of Spears, In War to Defend) In the first half of the 10th century, kings strive to expand their realms, noble lords turn rebels, longships prowl the sea and Magyar raiders plunder the land. In these turbulent times, four siblings of a minor Saxon house have to fight for survival. Athalard of Sichelstein inherits the family's lands, but also a bloodfeud that will drive him, hunted and haunted, to the borders of the inhabited world. Wittilo, monastery-educated but with a longing for arms and armour, will become involved in the civil war between Heinrich the Fowler's sons Otto and Thankmar, and must decide which oaths to keep when old enemies play the strings. Ercenmar seeks a future of glory at the court of Æthelstan of Wessex to find it will turn to ashes when friends become enemies. Their sister Erelinda will have to face the masterful queen Gunnhild of the Danes, but to save the man she loves she will have to leave behind her home and her family. The saga of the Sichelstein siblings is a tale of family, of love and hatred, duty and honour, of divided allegiances and battles, ranging from the glaciers of Iceland to the fertile plains at the Danube, from the swamps and forests of the Eastmarch to the islands of western Alba. Never to Return (part of the series of loosely connected Roman novels) The Roman officer Lucius Valerius Aurelianus must fight the demons of his past and his parents' ambitions, and protect the inept emperor Severus Alexander against the discontent legions. Then Severus Alexander is assassinated and Maximinus Thrax elected emperor by the soldiers. He brings with him a man from Lucius Valerius' past the young officer had hoped to never meet again. The German warrior Ricmar is outlawed for a murder he didn't commit thanks to the schemes of his half-brother. His exile will lead him all the way to the lands west of the Rhenus that are held by the Romans. Maximinus Thrax offers Ricmar a future if he will betray the people that outlawed him; an offer even more tempting when Ricmar learns the truth about his father and his heritage. When the Romans invade Germania in a punitive expedition, it will not only be a war between the Germanic tribes and the Roman army, but also the culmination of a family feud where brothers fight each other during a battle on the slopes of a mountain in the Hercynian Forest.

Cranial deformation has been done in history. The Huns and some eastern German tribes (at least, originally from the east; the Burgundians eventually migrated to the Rhine) practised it, for example. It was likely a way to express tribal affiliation, or - in case of some eastern Germanic tribes - imitating the conquering people to better adapt.

Thank you, Quiver, no hurry. I'll be on a holiday next week anyway, probably chasing more plotbunnies. They keep lurking in those historical sites. Your idea sounds fun. So guy had an affair with girlfriend's clone and now they're both pregnant, of course. And the clone is the assistant of the Evil Boss and out to steal some formula for creating genetically engineered spinach that will turn Evil Boss into the evil version of Popeye, and only the guy and the child of the clone, which has a superbrain, can stop Evil Boss. Boss's wife finds out everything, and threatens to leave for her parents who live on that planet which just happens to have made a deal with an enemy of Evil Bosss. Or something.

Here's a little something I came up with those last days. It's very flashbacky, but that is usually my way to get a grip on a new character. I'll have to spread the flashbacks in the rewrite of the entire story once it's finished, and maybe even shorten them. The story (not sure if it's going to be a novelette or something longer ) tells the story of Cathair mac Ceallach, a warrior from Dál Riata who will fight at the side of the Picts against king Ecgfrith of Northumbria at the battle of Nechtansmere (AD 685), the Battle of the Blue Swords. Right now he's coming home to Dál Riata but he is not happy about some members of his extended family who've been pretty mean to him ten years ago.

Cool ideas, especially the one about Vin. I hear you about being behind on writing. My writing speed is unfortunately more GRRM than Brandon Sanderson, though I got enough plotbunnies to last for the rest of my life and beyond.

War and Peace is one of my favourite books ever. Maybe I should give Rothfuss a try. I've heard quite a bit that his books are slow, and I like more action in my Fantasy (I go for slow with Tolstoy or Thomas Mann ) but if they have enough depth to make up for it ....

Rereading Tad Williams' Memory, Sorrow and Thorn trilo tetralogy. (Any bets the new trilogy will be 4 books as well.? ) Reading Simon Scarrow's Cato and Macro series. Pretty fun, but sometimes I could whack him for superficial research. But then, I'm a Roman geek as bad as they come.

Most of my writing is historical fiction, but I have one Fantasy project I'm working on on and off for ten years now. It has morphed quite a bit over time. The setting is some sort of alternate Europe in the way of Guy Gavriel Kay or Jacqueline Carey (Kushiel books) where magic exists. In my case the inspiration is predominantly the history - I can't let that go, it seems - of the 12th century, with some other fun bits thrown in for inspiration.

Oh, is that a place to drop some plotbunny offspring that's pestering me right now, though I already have enough novels-in-progress as it is: This little critter tried to sneak into my loosely connected series of novels about the Romans in Germania and Britannia. It promises to be a short story or novelette, but I never trust those bunnies. I know from experience how fast they grow.

That sounds good. Prompts never work for me, but I may come up with something fun.