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.
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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.
I'm enjoying writing in a steampunk world. It allows for a lovely texture, and description drawn in a different way than my usual. I'm also enjoying the protagonists who have emerged, particularly Pinkerton agents Elspeth and her companion, Artemus West.This snippet from the story I’m currently working on is set in the same world as recent pieces “Her Windowed Eyes, Her Chambered Heart” and “So Little Comfort in This World.”
Elspeth folded her hands in her lap, trying to keep her brows from knitting. She hated trains.
They were dirty, with bits of smut and coal blown back from the massive brass and aluminum steam engine pulling them along, and engrimed by successions of previous passengers.
They were noisy, from the engine’s howl to the screech of the never-sufficiently-greased axles as they rocketed along the steel rails with their steady pocketa-pocketa-pocketa chug seeping up through the swaying floor.
And they were oppressively full of people, all thinking things, all pressing down on her Sensitive’s mind, making her shrink down into the hard wooden seat as though the haze of thoughts hung like coal-smoke in the air and if she sank low enough, she’d avoid it.
She glanced over at her fellow Pinkerton agent, who returned her look with his own slightly quizzical if impersonal gaze. All of the curiosity of their fellow passengers was directed at him, perhaps the first mechanical being they’d ever seen, with silver and brass skin and curly hair, eyebrows, and moustache of gilded wire.
“They shouldn’t be keeping us back here,” she said for the third time in as many minutes. “If we’re his assigned bodyguards, they should let us up to inspect his compartment.”
“The porter said he’d tell them we were here,” Artemus said in precisely the same tone he’d used the first two times he’d said these words.
8 Responses
Cat Rambo: Documents of Tabat: Flowers of Tabat http://t.co/t6L7zXk9z4
Marc Tassin liked this on Facebook.
I’m vaguely disappointed this didn’t turn out to be a parody in the vein of “Houseplants of Gor.”
Now Cat Rambo is doing flowers: http://t.co/OsZtGJRBw5 https://t.co/B8OdAnFhBr
Esther Hazleton liked this on Facebook.
I love Houseplants of Gor so much. It is just so dead on. Someday I want to write something that funny.
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