From: mbottorff@lshelby.com   
      
   William Vetter  wrote:   
      
   > This person claimed that it is almost universal to use weather as a   
   > metaphor for the mood of the fiction, and authors describe the weather   
   > progressive scenes as an obligation, and this is sooooo cliched, and a   
   > grounds for rejection.   
      
   "Weather progressive scenes" ?   
      
   >   
   > I don't know that this is so, but I do see this sort of thing a lot, as in   
   > detective fiction where the weather is always dismal.  Or historical   
   > fiction where the city is always wet and stinking and beset by a miasma.   
      
   Hmm... I guess then it probably says something about me and the books I   
   write, that my weather is usually good.  :)   
      
   > How and when do you describe weather or what do you think about it.   
      
   Well,  I'm usually trying to establish a climate, because so much   
   cultural stuff is based on that.  So I try to put in enough stuff about   
   the weather for the reader to know where they're at, so to speak.   
      
   And bad weather is a great plot device, of course. :)   
      
   But I don't think I use it for mood much.   
      
      
   On Racciman's World, which is flat, the weather pattterns are so   
   time-of-year/place specific I mostly just cross reference a calendar   
   with a world map.   
      
   The Coral Palace stories take place in a tropical setting.  It rains   
   almost every evening except during the dry season, and when it isn't   
   raining, it's hot and humid.   
      
   In Across a Jade Sea we start in one temperate climate in early autumn,   
   and then before we make it to winter cross over to the opposite side of   
   the world to the opposite temperate zone where it's spring, and then we   
   go through a summer and the start of another autumn there.  I think I   
   mention rain twice, fog twice, and the rest of the time it's presumably   
   clear.   
      
   (Thinking about it, I probably don't make it rain enough when I'm doing   
   stuff set in a temporate zone.  I don't know that it's all my natural   
   optimism showing -- I also grew up in a relatively dry climate.)   
      
      
   In Eyes of Infistar I mention it getting colder, but no rain.  (On the   
   other hand, the entire story takes less than four days.)  Serena's half   
   of the story is almost entirely set in space habitats.   
      
   Black Flag, so far, takes place entirely within space habitats.  Some of   
   the later books will have characters encountering weather for the first   
   time in their life.  Other firsts would be: a sky, birds, gravity that   
   can't be turned off, mud...  >:)   
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
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   Michelle Bottorff -> Chelle B. -> Shelby   
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