Back in February I signed up for the A to Z blogging challenge in April.  The idea is to post a blog on the letter A on the 1st April, B on the 2nd and so on through the month, missing out the other Sundays, so you end with Z on 30th April. 

When I wrote about this then,  I thought it was an opportunity to talk more about how the Princelings world operated.  The more I worked on the blogs in preparation, the more I developed some of the background that hadn’t been entirely clear in my head before.  For example:

  • it’s a low-tech world but where does the metal come from?  and what about the glass for the bottles and glasses?  Those questions are addressed under the letter M.  A few new castles are mentioned too, as centres where they are made.
  • In the fourth book Hugo sets up a credit line with some gold, but why doesnt anyone else ever pay for anything?  I did know the answer but it is really good to have it written down (under C)
  • It was interesting that I thought Kira should not say “he’s on another planet” about someone because I wasn’t sure whether she’d know about planets.  The libraries in the castles have a great deal of information in them, but Fred and George were ignorant of a lot of this until they left Marsh, so what do they have in their own library?  I’ve addressed this under B for Books.
  • How much of Fred’s work in Natural Philosophy is just re-inventing the wheel?  It turns out that while Fred’s castle is sadly lacking in books on Natural Philosophy he has a natural flair for the subject, so he is not so far behind other thinkers as he might have been.  Castle Marsh will become a Centre of Learning for Natural Philosphy in the near future.
  • How did George get so good at engineering? The answer is: in a range of ways, including natural talent, a decent chunk of books in the library and some good mentoring from his uncles.

I have been particularly pleased that it helped me make decisions about some of the background to the stories.  Had there been some sort of natural (or unnatural) disaster that had swept humans out of the picture?  No, I decided on the parallel universe approach.

The blogs are about 80% done now, and ready for final editing plus a bit more depth in some areas (all in the latter half of April).  But as there are nearly 1300 blogs involved in the Challenge again this year, and a large number of writers among them, I’d better leave plenty of time for visiting them and leaving comments.  I hope people visit here too.

As a special gift to A to Z Challengers, I’m giving a coupon for Princelings of the East at 99cents for the whole of April.  That’s  about 75p in the UK.  The details are under the cover picture.

Click on the Ato Z button on the right to see other blogs in the Challenge.

Blogging from A to Z starts on Sunday
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