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Documents of Tabat: Fashions of 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

An Instructive Listing of the Fashions of Tabat, being Pamphlet #2 of the first series of “A Visitor’s Guide to Tabat,” Spinner Press, author unknown.

Tabat, like any city, has fashions that distinguish it, often shaped by the city’s history and resources. To look like one of the natives, you may want to purchase one or more of the following to wear.

Feather cockades, worn pinned to the breast or on a hat, represent a long tradition in the city. The explorers of the early expedition Perseverance found a river of feathers, cast off by vast flocks of waterfowl. They brought back sackfuls of the varicolored feathers to the city and it became customary to show one’s support for one expedition or another by wearing the cockades. In recent times they have become associated with different political powers in the city and with the coming of the elections, they are widely used to indicate one’s party affiliation.

Rain market hats, wide-brimmed and tightly woven of purple reeds, are seen in abundance on the streets of Tabat and are as functional and cheap as they are picturesque. Some sellers sell hats with designs or slogans painted upon them, often distributing the latter at political rallies.

Great-coats, woven of wool or made of dyed fur, are traditional gear for Merchants, Explorers, and others who travel widely. Their styles may vary from year to year in matters like buttons, pocket cut, or thickness of piping, but generally they remain the same in overall look.

Dandies of either sex prize the fine lace gloves produced by the Altos factory, where they are woven by the large spiders exclusive to Altos use by order of the Duke. If on the street outside where they are housed in early morning or evening, linger to hear their haunting song.

***

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.

#sfwapro

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Coming Up in 2011

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Photo courtesy of Wayne Rambo.
As this final week of the year has ground past, I’ve been spending time drawing up my plans for next year, some of which involve this blog and website. I figured I’d clue you in on some of the upcoming posts.

As part of the website revamp, I’ll be posting some stories and nonfiction stuff on this blog. My aim is to consolidate it all in one site, so there will be a wide variety – including my first published poem! At the same time, look for more regular posts, including posts building an overall 1000 Recommended Fantasy Books Reading List, writing advice, publication news, give-aways, and sundry cat pictures as I take advantage of WP’s capability for scheduling posts. I’ll be introducing new pages as I arrange them on this site, such as this Zalanthas page.

I’ll be working on including more images, but expect more podcasts and video entries as well as I convert more of the collection stories to audio as well as doing some podcasting for other sites.

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StumbleUpon Resources (For the Spring 2012 Blogging Class)
Raven, Emerging from a Box
As we all know, the true purpose of the Internet is the collection of cat photos, and StumbleUpon is a great source of them. This is Raven, emerging from a box

I’ll be posting several pieces over the next week with information gathered for the Bellevue College blogging class, whose second session takes place this Saturday. I teach an online class for writers interested in building an online presence; the next one is July 23, 2012. We’ll be talking about social networking and social bookmarking, which are two related but different concepts. Social bookmarking sites include Delicious, Digg, and Reddit along with the largest one of them all: StumbleUpon.

What is StumbleUpon?

StumbleUpon is a social bookmarking site. Users submit links to content they want to share, an act that is called “stumbling” the link. Other users can give a link a thumbs up or a thumbs down using the StumbleUpon toolbar, which a user can install when registering a StumbleUpon account. Content is tagged according to interests, and users randomly browsing content (also called “stumbling”) will see more popular content more often.

Three Reasons to Care about StumbleUpon

  1. StumbleUpon can drive a significant amount of web traffic – over 50% (50.34 from August to September in 2011) of social media traffic in the US. That’s right — more than Facebook (37.4%) or Twitter (3.23%). Last year it passed the 25 billion click mark. 2.2 pages are added to StumbleUpon each month.
  2. StumbleUpon pages keep gaining traffic long after that FB post has dropped off your wall and that tweet has vanished from your Twitter stream.
  3. StumbleUpon is an addictive pastime, particularly for bored workers. They’re stumbling for stuff that they’re actively interested in, and I know as a writer that there’s plenty of engaged speculative fiction fans in that pool of users.
  4. StumbleUpon’s paid attention to the growing number of people accessing the Internet through mobile devices, a trend that will only continue.

Basic StumbleUpon tips:
As with any social networking or bookmarking site, quality is crucial. An account that has a long-time record of interesting sites will do better than a new account with a handful of suspiciously similar links. Don’t stumble your own stuff more than occasionally (at most).

  • Set up a complete profile.
  • Stumble other people’s content.
  • Connect with other people by following them.
  • Join channels pertinent to your content.
  • Include images.
  • Use the service.
  • Use the Stumbleupon shortlink, as Kathryn Hawkins details here.
  • If you have the traffic, set up a StumbleUpon channel.

StumbleUpon Resources
Background and Statistics:
StumbleUpon Drives More Than 50% of Social Media Traffic
The New Wave of Personalization and Who is Joining the Game
StumbleUpon Sent 700M Pageviews To Other Websites in December, Is Growing 20% Monthly
StumbleUpon Sponsored Stumbles vs. Google Adwords

Practical Guides:
4 Ways To Increase Your Traffic with StumbleUpon
8 Tips for Going Viral with StumbleUpon
An Addict’s Guide to StumbleUpon
How to Drive Website Traffic with StumbleUpon
How to Get StumbleUpon Traffic
How to Use StumbleUpon for Your Business: The Definitive Guide
The Secret to Getting Highly Targeted Traffic From StumbleUpon
Use StumbleUpon to Drive More Traffic to Your Website
Using StumbleUpon to Drive Website Traffic

I’m Catrambo on StumbleUpon; feel free to follow me, I’ll happily follow people back.

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