Just a few words from Steve that were in the ConJose restaurant guide that I thought I'd share with anyone who hadn't seem em. ************************************************ "In building a fantasy world, I think it's a good idea to start with the food and work backwards from there. There are a couple of reasons for this: In the first place, it'll remind you as the author that, however intricate your world, it is full of people, and people eat. It will establish a connection to the reader, who almost certainly eats as well. Second, it's a pretty good method of worldbuilding just by itself. Here's how it works: You start with a meal. What's for supper? Maybe some beef? Well, ok. What are they feeding the cattle. Maize? Fine, then you know this region has a soil reaction of between pH 5.5 and 8.0, probably a prairie soil or, at any rate, some well-drained loam soil. You know that this region has at least 140 frost-free days per year, a mean summer temperature between 21 and 27 degrees (C), and probably 24-40 inches of rain a year. How do you know this? Because you've looked it up in your handy copy of Principles of Field Crop Production, Third Edition, by Martin, Leonard, and Stamp, (MacMilliam, 1976). Then you repeat the process for something else you're eating, maybe rice (I won't go into the specifics this time), and you can triangulate. Where can both of these things grow? What conditions does it imply? What sort of world has a place like that? All sort of fun stuff flows naturally out of the food. Besides, it will encourage you to write about food; and that's good, because I like reading about it." --Steven Brust ************************************************ Claire (sorry to have missed the breakfast, Nytemuse -- I was a bit too lost to find it.)