{"id":44716,"date":"2018-11-05T06:00:41","date_gmt":"2018-11-05T11:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=44716"},"modified":"2018-11-05T03:30:34","modified_gmt":"2018-11-05T08:30:34","slug":"the-witch-watch-setting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=44716","title":{"rendered":"The Witch Watch Setting"},"content":{"rendered":"

This week I talked to my podcast<\/a>-mate Paul about my book The Witch Watch<\/a>. Paul is interested in writing a sequel. Here’s an excerpt<\/a> if you want to get a feel for the original. <\/p>\n

Spoilers for my 2012 novel below.<\/p>\n

I’d planned on making a sequel. The book feels almost like an origin story for a group of adventurers. Alice is the leader but somewhat of a glass cannon. Simon is your hacker stereotype that can know an unlimited number of expositional things about the magic arts and can pull off some amazing magical tricks, but he’s not much use in a fight. Gibert is our brutish comic relief. Moxley is the Commissioner Gordon of the group, aiming the team at problems and providing a more grounded point of view. I love how the parts fit together and how easy it would be to continue the story.<\/p>\n

Maybe it would be cool to have Gilbert visit the American west as an undead cowboy? We could ride some steam trains and see what magic is like in the lawlessActually, by 1885 the west was getting pretty dang civilized. But that’s good story fuel. The wild lawless world is being tamed, and the encroaching arm of civilization is putting pressure on various practitioners of the magic arts.<\/span> west. Maybe the group could visit Stonehenge and discover it’s actually a powerful sorcery circle and they have to tangle with a cult. Maybe they could head to a British colony for an adventure and find that magic is viewed and practiced differently around the world. <\/p>\n

Also, for whatever reason I set up the world so that you’re born<\/em> a wizard but must study<\/em> to become a sorcerer. It made sense at the timePossibly because I hadn’t mapped out the world before I started.<\/span>, but this is backwards from how the two are portrayed in other media. To smooth over this, I thought it would be fun to embrace this discrepancy as part of the setting. As it turns out, the English have inverted the two words compared to the rest of Europe, and people from the mainland are always haggling with Alice over this bit of nomenclature like people arguing about which side of the road is the “correct” one to drive on.<\/p>\n

The book is ripe for a sequel, but I’ve never been able to get myself interested in the project. I like world-building, not so much world-maintaining<\/em>. But hey, why can’t we just let other people write sequels?<\/em><\/p>\n

I told Paul to go for it. And for the record, the same goes for everyone else. I doubt there’s a huge group of people out there looking to work on the Witch Watch Expanded Universe, but I think the idea of an open setting is a fun one. Just like anyone can write their own Alice in Wonderland story and publish it, anyone ought to be able to take the Witch Watch setting and do what they like with it.<\/p>\n

I don’t know if it’s possible to do this in an official way. Sure, I could have put my book in the public domain, but then I’d lose the ability to sell it for money while prohibiting other from doing the same. I don’t think there’s a Creative Commons license for “I retain the right to THIS book, but you’re free to use the setting and characters in your own work without asking permission and without needing to pay me”. It seems like that would be a useful sort of license to have.<\/p>\n

I have no idea what Paul plans for the book. <\/p>\n

In other book news, I’m still working on my next novel, which is Cyberpunk-ish. It’s mostly an excuse to do something new with AI because I’m sick of seeing “AI loses its mind and tries to kill everyone” plots. <\/p>\n

I’m done with the writing. The editing is about 20% done. The cover is done. After the editing is complete we still have to format it for ePub. The goal is to have it done by the end of the year.<\/p>\n

Fingers crossed. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week I talked to my podcast-mate Paul about my book The Witch Watch. Paul is interested in writing a sequel. Here’s an excerpt if you want to get a feel for the original. Spoilers for my 2012 novel below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44716"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44716\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44723,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44716\/revisions\/44723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}