My reference books. The name sounds…old. But for me at least, I have a handful of books I use, and use often for both inspiration and clarification when I’m writing. This is one of my reference books, the Atlas Obscura. These aren’t books on writing, though I have a few of those as well. No, these are books that I used to formulate ideas on places, thoughts, and how certain creatures, and people *might* behave.
The first reference book I wanted to talk about is in the picture above. Atlas Obscura. First off, it’s just a fun book to flip through. The strange and unusual out of the way places and things that exist in the world always kind of interested me, long before I started writing. But I have found this book near invaluable at times.
Let’s use an example from the sequel of Blood of a Fallen God, which I’m finishing up. There is a whole series of climatic action that takes place in a dessert area. I sat down and flipped through that sort of area from the Atlas Obscura, and based on notes and things that exist came up with a strange and unusual location for those events.
Could I have done this without the reference to the Atlas? Yes, of course. But I find using the Atlas Obscura helps me because everything in it is a bit different, a bit off (not in a bad way) and I wanted that ‘feel’ for that area in the book.
While the Atlas isn’t cheap, it isn’t that much money either. I find it highly useful, and point in fact, since it’s hardback, it’s worth the investment. So there you go, my reference books: Atlas Obscura.
I’m going to attempt to make this a series of blog posts, as I mentioned in my newsletter (You do get my newsletter, right?)
