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Documents of Tabat: Arriving in Tabat

abstract image
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.

#sfwapro

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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."

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And So March Begins

Cover for the fantasy novel Beasts of Tabat,
Cover for Beasts of Tabat, first volume in the Tabat Quartet.
Things are cranking away as we get ready for the book release. Here’s the cover – the typo that some of you will notice has been addressed. 😉

The book will be available at Emerald City Comicon — find me there at one of my panels, or stop by the Wordfire Press table, which is where I’ll be hanging out when not stalking John Barrowman.

Those panels will be:

Friday, March 27: Fueling Creativity: Sci-Fi and Fantasy Authors on Ideas
Room: Hall B (WSCC 602-603)
Time: 3:30PM – 4:20PM
Moderator: David Hulton

Guest(s): Cat Rambo, Greg Bear, Ramez Naam, Jason M. Hough, Myke Cole
Authors often dread the interview question “where did you get the idea for this book?” because the answer is never simple. There’s rarely a single moment where an entire plot or world comes to mind. This panel is an exploration of why that’s such a difficult question to answer. Our panel of novelists will discuss the many ways they find inspiration for their work. In addition, they’ll talk about the wonderful and often strange ways an idea will find its way into a novel.

Sunday, March 29: Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations
Room: Hall B (WSCC 602-603)
Time: 10:30AM – 11:20AM
Moderator: Anna Alexander

Guest(s): Cat Rambo, Garth Reasby
Diversity in entertainment is both vital and challenging. This panel of novelists will cover how to effectively write compelling characters who are different than you and how to deal with critics of who you are versus your work. Panelists include Anna Alexander, Jamie Ford, Cat Rambo, Aaron Duran, J.R. Terrel, Garth Reasby, and Sarah Remy.

I’ll also be appearing at ICFA March 18-22, and will be leading an informational meeting about SFWA there.

Plenty of stuff is lined up for the blog over the next two months, including:

  • Several giveaways
  • Lots of guest posts, including experts talking about writing for games and comic books, how to write more than one series at the same time, food and fantasy, writing collaboratively, and more!
  • Pieces of original fiction related to the book
  • Essays on the writers that influenced the book
  • Links to appearances elsewhere
  • Snippets from the sequel, Hearts of Tabat

I will not be teaching or taking on any new editing projects in March; I will be mailing out soon about April and May classes.

#sfwapro

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Links from the Blogging 101 Class - Google Analytics Resources

There’s a number of tools for evaluating how a blog’s doing traffic-wise, but I’m not sure why anyone doesn’t just use Google Analytics, which will tell you how many visitors, where they’re coming from, what pages they’re looking at, and much more. Much like SEO, this is something that could take up its own workshop, and we didn’t get much to explore it in class. Hopefully these links will prove an alternate entrance.

GOOGLE ANALYTICS RESOURCES:
Google Analytics Lessons: http://www.google.com/support/conversionuniversity/bin/request.py?hl=en&contact_type=indexSplash&rd=1
Google Analytics Web Channel: http://www.youtube.com/googleanalytics
Tutorial on Determining Social Media ROI: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2075044/Google-Analytics-Tutorial-Determining-Social-Media-ROI
Google Analytics & Why You Probably Don’t Need the Rest: http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/google-analytics-why-you-probably-dont-need-the-rest/
Maximizing Visitor Retention with Google Analytics: http://webtoastie.co.uk/maximising-visitor-retention-with-google-analytics/
Web Analytics Demystified: http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/web-analytics-demystified/

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