From childhood, Karin Shah wrote herself into her favorite TV shows before falling asleep every night. She adores Paranormal Romance, Romantic Fantasy, and Science Fiction Romance/Futuristics, but will read anything with great characters and a satisfying, happy ending.
Karin lives with her amazing husband Nikhil, brilliant children Natalie, and Roman and two mischievous basenjis in Columbus, Ohio. She belongs to RWA, Central Ohio Fiction Writers, the Futuristic, Fantasy and Paranormal special interest chapter of the RWA, and the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. www.KarinShah.com
**********************************************************************************
I Just Flew in From India, And Boy Are My Arms Tired
Being married to an East Indian, I have the pleasure of spending weeks visiting his family and touring the beautiful country of India. In fact, as I write this, the last twinges of jet lag are only now leaving my body from our last trip.
But this article isn’t about India, it’s about the importance of world building.
Whatever genre you write, whether Contemporary Romance, Suspense, Fantasy or any other world building is an inextricable part of the storytelling.
The reason I mention my recent trip is because it was the collision of my culture and my husband’s culture that truly taught me how unique a culture can be.
My husband is Gujarati. His ancestors came from the Indian state of Gujarat and though he -- like his parents before him -- was raised in Mumbai, Gujarati is his mother tongue. In Gujarati, politeness is built in. When you are asking for something politely the word is modified so the person being asked knows you are asking with respect. A “please” word is extraneous.
English, of course, relies on please and thank you to keep interactions respectful, so when we first married my husband thought I was insulting him by saying “please and thank you” and I thought he was insulting me, by not. You can imagine the conflict this raised in our household!
It had never occurred to me before, that a language might not have an exact equivalent for please.
Our early relationship was fraught with opportunities for me to realize how much I didn’t know about his culture because I was too close to my own for me to even know to ask.
I assumed everyone slept on a spring-filled mattress and made the bed the same way. But a cotton mattress is traditional in Mumbai and when it’s sweltering hot, having two covers over both people (sharing body heat) is the last thing you’d want to do.
We had different ways of dealing with everything, neither was wrong just formed from our different worlds.
When most people think of world building, they think of Fantasy and the glamorous parts of world building -- designing a government, naming the currency, the languages, the peoples. But even in a traditional Fantasy while those larger aspects are important, they don’t truly define the essence of a world.
The spirit of a world, in my opinion, is in the details of every day life.
I don’t mean that we, as authors, should describe in exhaustive detail every facet character’s environment and routine. The reader, as they say in spy movies, is on a “need to know basis,” but we should know, because the character’s surroundings, interactions, and daily life shape both the character and the plot.
World building is important because in the end the environment shapes characters. And each character has his or her own world.
My character Tia in STARJACKED grew up on a space ship. More it was a pirate ship, everything about that fact defines her, from her reaction to being hurt to her attitude about other people.
Her friend Kaber, also grew on the ship, but because she is a different person, her view of that world is slightly different. They share some similarities, but each is uniquely her own.
The clash of those worlds drives plot. World building forms each characters’ goals and motivations, and fuels the conflict, and is therefore fundamentally necessary to any story whether the setting is a modern office building (Die Hard) or a civil war plantation (Gone with the Wind).
STARJACKED
Blurb
With the fate of the galaxy at risk, love may not be enough.../span>
In the lawless fringes of deep space, pirate Tia Sen has a rep for being hard as plascrete, tough as Amalan leather, and as strong as she is beautiful. She also has a secret that courts death: For years she has been freeing enslaved children. Stepping in to rescue a valiant mechanic from a near-fatal beating risks more than her life. Thanks to her traitorous heart, her web of lies is in danger of unraveling.
Undercover operative Rork Al’Ren is no stranger to lies. Emotionally scarred by the murders of his wife and unborn child, he burns to eradicate every bit of pirate scum in the galaxy. Then his mission goes sour, and he finds himself Tia’s personal slave—and falling in love with the very pirate he’s sworn to destroy.
Yet love is a luxury he can’t afford. Tia possesses a powerful new weapon that could overwhelm the Union of Planets and plunge the galaxy into war.
If Rork can’t convince her to surrender it, he may have to break her trust—and her heart.
STARJACKED can be purchased at www.samhainpublishing.com/romance/starjacked. It’s also available at Fictionwise.com, mobipocket.com and mybookstoreandmore.com
***********************************************************************************
Lynda here - I hope you've enjoyed meeting today's guest. Be sure to leave a comment for her. Oh, and I'm now on Twitter so if you're there, if you follow me, I'll follow you :-D I'm at http://www.twitter.com/lyndakscott
Technorati Tags:
futuristic romance, Karin Shah, Lynda K Scott, Starjacked
Flickr Tags:
futuristic romance, Karin Shah, Lynda K Scott, Starjacked
Del.icio.us Tags:
futuristic romance, Karin Shah, Lynda K Scott, Starjacked
Furl Tags:
futuristic romance, Karin Shah, Lynda K Scott, Starjacked
Post a Comment
Post a Comment