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 Major Artists of Tabat, being Pamphlet #5 of the series of “A Visitor’s Guide to Notables of Tabat,” Spinner Press, author unknown.
Tabat’s art tradition is well established, and not a mere copy of the practices and schools of the Old Continent, as has been charged against the artists of Verranzo’s New City. Tabat’s artists build upon the traditions of the past while innovating and creating anew in a way that reflects the diversity and history of the city. When making conversation about the city’s art, it is useful to know the names of its leading figures.
1The cousin of famous Gladiator Bella Kanto, Leonoa Kanto is a figure in her own right, known for an eye that catches remarkable depth of detail and a willingness to speak about her work and how it relates to the day’s influences unmatched by other artists.
Descendent of a long line of sculptors and artists, Coe Firaubo has produced statues that adorn the Ducal gardens and the College of Mages grounds, where his most famous work, “Truth defeats the Serpents of Falsehood,” is situated.
An artist who has only recently risen to prominence, Etaya Wain uses nothing but natural elements in his artwork, employing homemade dyes and natural substances, many of them specifically taken from the north and celebrating its influence on Tabat.
Tailuaba Cloudseeker chooses to draw on supernatural influences (and magical animals) in the creation of her work, and both her subjects and her methods reflect her former Training as a Mage.
All of Tabat has lately been buzzing about unknown artist Flora, whose work is made of dried flowers, stuffed Fairies, and other creative taxidermy. The work is sold through Bernarda Manycloaks’ gallery, which has refused to disclose anything more about the artist and his or her work.
***
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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~K. Richardson
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Documents of Tabat: Pests of Tabat
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 this purpose. I’ll release them at the end of April in e-book form; careful readers will find clues to some aspects of Beasts of Tabat in them. -Cat
An Instructive Listing of the Pests of Tabat, being Pamphlet #2 of the fifth series of “A Visitor’s Guide to Tabat,” Spinner Press, author unknown.
The newcomer to Tabat will find the pests they are accustomed to: fleas, lice, and rats are no strangers to the city. But several creatures indigenous to the area may cause the unwary traveler distress.
In late summer nights, the gold and orange wings of phoenix moths will be visible in their mating swarms. Despite the beauty of the phenomenon, the creatures are destroyed whenever possible, for the flames created when they deposit their eggs and immolate themselves in order to harden the casings can lead to larger fires.
Marsh flies are prevalent on the city’s eastern side when the wind is from that quarter. The fierce bites of these insects have been known to drive even the most placid creature to the brink of madness. Citronella and other scented candles and lamp oils are the most popular remedy for these creatures, along with bed netting in the summer months.
Parasitic Fairies have, for the most part, been eradicated, but clusters of the minute Fairies known as slavemakers still exist in the farmlands. While they rarely if ever make their way into the city, those traveling in the areas directly around Tabat should be aware of the danger they pose.
Mandrakes are neither animal nor Beast, but rather a plantlike intelligence found only on this continent and capable of ambulation in their early stages. Mandrakes kill larger mammals, using the corpse as a plant in which to root themselves and propagate and are, like parasitic Fairies, only a danger to those venturing outside the main city.
Due to Tabat’s damp weather, a myriad of molds thrive in untended corners. Scarlet mold, toxic to animal and human, may appear and is invariably accompanied by black mold worms, whose bite produces severe hallucinations.
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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.
Social Media: FollowerWonk Writeup and Links for 3/25/2013
I spend at least a little time each day looking at social media news and new stuff and track the most useful links here. If you enjoyed last week’s Pinterest Analytics post, are interested in using that social network more effectively, and have an hour where you need something to listen to, I recommend this webinar. Among other things, I found out why people do those long tall pictures/infographics (which was obvious once I thought about it, so everyone else in the world may have already figured that out).
So here’s some thoughts after spending some time poking at an app provided by Seomoz.org, Followerwonk, a Twitter Analytics tool.
So – why be interested in analytics of any kind, whether it’s Google, Pinterest, Facebook, or Twitter? Because numbers let you know what works and what doesn’t in driving traffic to your site. Figure out what works and do more of that. Figure out what doesn’t work and do less.
Followerwonk gives you a number to track, Social Authority, that measures your influence on Twitter. Its formula is based on three factors:
The retweet rate for a user’s last few hundred tweets
How recent those tweets were
A somewhat nebulous thing that Followerwonk explains as “A retweet-based model trained on user profile data), which I believe is their way of saying, “Part of our algorithm is hidden so users can’t game it, but there’s something there, really.”
Personally, I’m wondering whether someone favoriting your tweet has any influence. Based on what they’re saying here, it doesn’t, and it seems like it should.
But you don’t want to know your social authority score so much as someone else’s. Followerwonk is intended to help you identify followers with a high social authority score so you can target them with your message.
With that in mind, here are the main capabilities:
Search Twitter bios: Identify people with specific keywords in their bios or other traits such as number of followers, age of account (Followerwonk notes about this figure: “The age of an account is an interesting way to measure value. Users who have been on Twitter for a while are early adopters, and generally more valuable than newbies. As well, there is a higher percentage of spam accounts in newer user segments (as Twitter has not yet cleared them out).”), and Social Authority. This is actually pretty powerful. You can narrow things down by geographical location and set min/max number of tweets, followers, and following.
Compare users: Compare several Twitter users in terms of the users they follow or those who follow them. It’s certainly always nice to see a Venn diagram and know those days in math class learning what they are wasn’t wasted, but I don’t know that I found this report particularly useful, except that it did indicate I should be RTing and @connecting more.
Analyze followers: Here Followerwonk lets you analyze your or any other user’s followers or who is being followed. You can see them on a map, which is nifty, and I’ve included an example of one. I learned, unsurprising, that my largest group of followers occurs in the same geographical region I’m in, but also, surprisingly, that the next largest group is in the Southern United States. Other ways to sort them includes by gender, social authority rank, follower/following accounts, tweet numbers, language, the time they’re most active, as well as a couple of interesting word clouds generated through bio information.
Track followers: Changes to your social graph are presented in this tab, but only if you’re paying for this functionality. Otherwise all you can do is see this data for the Twitter user @followerwonk.
Sort followers: Again, paid functionality, which lets you sort a follower list by social authority, tweets, number following/followed by, and account age.
Here's a map generated through the Analyze followers tab. Note that there's several caveats, including "This is an inexact procedure and so some points may be mapped incorrectly." and that it's only looking at 5,000 followers. Still, there's some interesting, if perhaps not particularly actionable, data here.
As with many tools, here you’re been given a taste in order to persuade you to cough up for the paid version. If I had the budget for it, Followerwonk is definitely worth paying for, and it’s just part of the tools from a SEOMoz Pro membership – but they run $99 a month, which is going to be outside the reach for most people working on their own publicity. For a deeper look at Followerwonk, try Gianluca Fiorelli’s How I Use Followerwonk and Why I Love It.
Other Social Media Links of Interest:
I’m looking at this tool and will be writing it up in the future: Buffer, which lets you schedule Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and App.net with the free version, and up to twelve networks with the paid version.
Are you a writer interested in finding out how to effectively promote yourself via the Internet? Sign up for my Building an Online Presence for Writers class. It’s taught online via Google Hangouts and the next session is Sunday, 9:30-11:30 AM PST, July 14.
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