What are the documents of Tabat? In an early version of the book, I had a number of interstitial pieces, each a document produced by the city: playbills, advertisements, guide book entries. They had to be cut but I kept them for web-use. I hope you enjoy this installment, but you’ll have to read Beasts of Tabat to get the full significance. -Cat
“Arriving in Tabat: A Visitor’s Guide,” being Pamphlet #12 of the second series of A Visitor’s Guide to Tabat, Spinner Press, author unknown.
No traveler notices the same thing about the city of Tabat when they first see it. For one, it may be the sparkle of sunlight on the harbor and the way the great ship’s shadows glide beside them in the water. For another it may be the lines of the Great Tram and its companions, the vast iron baskets that, suspended from cables, carry passengers up and down the city’s terraces. Or the tiles that adorn most of the roof, a vague gray purple or green in color, made from clay from the marshes to the east of the city.
But how you enter the city will affect your view. You may come by ship, from the Old Continent or the Southern Isles, or even farther aboard, and your first view will be the city’s terraces, sloping down to the harbor’s protected bowl.
If you come from the opposite side, traveling down the Northstretch River and arriving at the river docs, you’ll see the terraces from above, marked with the silver lines of the trams and the green stripe of the Heart Garden cutting across them.
A few come on foot across the marshes on Tabat’s eastern edge, but they are haunted by water-horses and crocodiles, and dangerous for any who do not know the tricks of surviving there.
Of late, experiments with demon-powered dirigibles have provided a new vista to the city, although available only to those who hold the Duke’s favor. Who knows what new sights the city will present from that angle?
But no matter how it looks to you, know that you have come to Tabat, the most wonderful city in the world.
***
Love this world and want to spend longer in it? Check out Hearts of Tabat, the latest Tabat novel! Or get sneak peeks, behind the scenes looks, snippets of work in progres, and more via Cat’s Patreon.
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"(On the writing F&SF workshop) Wanted to crow and say thanks: the first story I wrote after taking your class was my very first sale. Coincidence? nah….thanks so much."
~K. Richardson
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Social Media and Internet Links for November, 2014
Covers the basics of creating and maintaining an online presence for writers. What you need on a website, how to effectively use social media, how to find readers via social media, what free resources are available to writers, whether it's worth it to pay for online advertising, and, most importantly, how to promote yourself online without using all your valuable writing time.Nobody reading your blog? 10 reasons to persist!: Tne more than valid reasons to keep blogging, even when the only person commenting is your mother. 12 Places to Find Fabulous Content: Some good stuff here that’s adaptable to whatever type of blog one might be working with. “Your own bloopers,” for example, is a nice one. How to Use Social Media Listening to Create Better Content for Your Audience: Along the same lines, identify relevant topics to write about on social media as well as identifying influencers and building relationships. How to Get Interviewed by Popular Blogs (Even If You’re Not a Big Shot): If you’re trying to build your authority — as well as links to your website — getting interviewed is a valid strategy. This should help get you started, but be aware it requires a little bit of brazeness. Content Distribution Tools: A variety of additional ways to share content, such as a list on List.ly 13 Experts on How To Promote Content Before Hitting Publish: Some of these steps seem more actionable than others, but some useful stuff to think about when strategizing content production. 7 Practical Ways to Find Content Your Followers Will Love: Primarily about tools rather than different approaches. Covered are Buffer, BuzzSumo, ContentGems, Feedly, HootSuite, Klout, and Swayy.
Community Building a Sustainable Community. As a sometimes moderator of the SFWA boards, and the person the moderators currently report to, I keep an eye out for interesting or useful community building pieces. This is one,although it’s aimed at a community of fans.
Privacy and Security
No one knows where it came from, but there’s new spyware called Regin out there, and it is widespread in crucial industries such as energy, telecom, hospitality, and travel. It’s there and actively monitoring, but experts don’t know why. “Once they [Regin’s operators] gain access, they can remotely control a person’s keyboard, monitor Internet activity, and recover deleted files….O’Murchu said Regin is part of a disquieting trend of government-written and government-enacted malware.”
Social Media What Is Pinterest? A Database of Intentions: An interview with Evan Sharp, one of Pinterest’s co-founders, about the image-centered social network. “What’s cool is that because every object was put there by a person. It’s not the largest inventory in the way that maybe a nerd like me would get excited about. But everything that’s on there, at least one human found interesting, so there is a very good chance that at least one other human is going to find that interesting. So, it’s a good set of objects. It’s the world’s largest set of objects that people care about.”
I put a couple of Twitter-related blog posts out in November. They were Twitter Basics and Best Practices and The One Twitter List You Should Be Keeping: My thoughts on some Twitter best practices.
2014 Social Media Image Size Cheat Sheet: “Understanding why you should use images is the easy part. It’s the mastering of how to actually do it that can be tricky. In addition to finding the right images to post, tweet, pin, and share across your different networks; you also need to figure out the right dimensions for your images, as well.” That’s pretty dead on, which makes this a very useful resource. The 10 Latest and Greatest Social Media Strategies to Boost Your Results and Save You Time: Some useful and interesting stuff here, at least a couple of which I plan to try. Social Sharing Powerhouses: Some places (or strategies) you may not be trying, like Guy Kawasaki’s approach of tweeting a piece of content four times over the course of eight hours. 10 Data-Driven Steps To Dominate LinkedIn Publishing: I still don’t feel like I’ve got a good handle on how to use LinkedIn, but this article may provide a decent starting point. Whats the Best Way to Spend 30 Minutes of Your Time on Social Media Marketing? Unsurprisingly, being able to schedule content plays a part here too. Includes the 12 tasks of a social media manager. 8 Piece-of-Cake Ways to Get More Pinterest Followers: Pinterest remains a social network of interest to me. These are some decent best practices for posting on there.
I follow links like this in order to keep my next edition of Creating an Online Presence up to date. If you want to track my links as they occur, you can follow me on Delicious. If you’re interested in the next online class on it, it’s Sunday morning, February 15th, 2015, 9:30 AM-12:30 PM PST. The cost is $89 for former students; $99 for new students.
What are the documents of Tabat? In an early version of the book, I had a number of interstitial pieces, each a document produced by the city: playbills, advertisements, guide book entries. They had to be cut but I kept them for web-use. I hope you enjoy this installment, but you’ll have to read Beasts of Tabat to get the full significance. -Cat
An Instructive Listing of the Flowers of Tabat, being Pamphlet #3 of the fifth series of “A Visitor’s Guide to Tabat,” Spinner Press, author unknown.
Winter roses were originally created by Elora Two Sails as an ornament for the winter months. Their magical nature makes them expensive, but capable of blooming during the coldest weather.
Irises, particularly the blue and gold variety that grows so thickly along the canals, is Tabat’s signatory flower, its colors matching those of Tabat’s flag.
Tulips, brought with the original settlers of Tabat from their homeland, have been developed into a wide variety of colors and shapes. Forced tulips in little pots are a traditional good-luck gift exchanged during the first few weeks of spring.
Marsh blooms include the rare Siren flower, believed to be a variant of Mandrakes, which are prized despite the dangers of their collection.
Beloved first sign of spring, primaflora are tiny blue flowers which grow low to the ground and invariably bloom on the first day of Spring.
***
Love the world of Tabat and want to spend longer in it? Check out Hearts of Tabat, the latest Tabat novel! Or get sneak peeks, behind the scenes looks, snippets of work in progres, and more via Cat’s Patreon.
One Response
Cat Rambo: Documents of Tabat: Arriving in Tabat http://t.co/iIfCP9cM9x