Could be a flood plain.  Not all rivers flow out of mountains.  Sometimes you can have rivers that flow through plains or marshy areas that get a lot of precipitation. 

There's been a debate going on around the web lately about fantasy, specifically the tendency toward less morally elevated characters and stories..  I thought I'd post some of the articles here and get some reactions.

It started with an article, "The Bankrupt Nihilism of Our Fallen Fantasist," by Leo Grin talks about the increase in nihilistic and gritty fantasy as opposed to the more traditional Sword and Sorcery of Robert E. Howard, and High Fantasy by Tolkien.  The article uses the works Joe Abercrombie as as its main example of this trend

http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/lgrin/2011/02/12/the-bankrupt-nihilism-of-our-fallen-fantasists/

Abercrombie replied, rather glibly I thought, on his blog.

http://www.joeabercrombie.com/2011/02/15/bankrupt-nihilism/

The Black Gate ran an interesting rebuttal to several remarks Ambercrombie made.

http://www.blackgate.com/2011/02/20/the-decline-and-fall-of-the-fantasy-novel/

I don't know if this is one of those things which is a lot of sound and fury, but I find the discussion intriguing.  As someone who enjoys the more traditional moral heroes (like Dresden) and more traditional stories where people are basically decent, and are distinct from the bad guys, I don't much like the more nihilistic fiction trend.  I have for a long time known that I had to avoid works that were more "real," or "gritty."  I'm not saying that there's no place for works like that, but they're not to my taste.

Frankly, I find the idea that works like Abercrombie now dominate fantasy (an idea expressed in the first article, the one that started it all) is absurd.  The more traditional fantasies are still the ones that sell.  There hundreds who want to be the next Jordan, or Sanderson or Butcher.  I don't know many people who want to be the next Abercrombie.  There might be a few who want to be the next George R.R. Martin, and that's a scary thought.  But I think that the former authors are popula,r and inspire emulators, not because they sell so well, but because there is a joy in reading that kind of fiction, and a joy in writing in that vein.

Anyway, that's my opinion.  What's yours?

In my world magical abilities are inborn.

To access that ability, mental techniques are required to receive a certain result.  Sometimes this involves rituals, sometimes just a cleansing breath. 

A persons affinity with a particular kind of magic (in my world white, black, elemental, or necromantic) depends on which supernatural element they access first.  In my necromancers case, he brings his father back from death after a heart attack in a field of wheat.  As a result of bringing the father back, the wheat (and all the living things around them, are sucked of their life force.  Since he used his magical ability to deny death, he forever after has one foot in the world of the dead.

He has the power to animate anything that had been alive.  He can communicate spirits that haven't yet, or have no desire to, move on.  More importantly he can feed power to spirits and animated skeletons and they like, but always at a cost to something living.  The self aware the living creature he's trying to take power from, the harder it is.

There's a lot more, but this is the basics of necromancy in my story. 

A good point in fact is that online writing groups use mailing lists and not forums.  It's better for the stories chances to keep it from the public realm until its accepted for publication

I'm interested in learning from the successes of these women. Do they have their flaws? Of course. Are they still crazy successful authors? Hell yeah. And frankly, it's studying their accomplishments that can help us, not sulking over the flaws that their agents and editors and publishers and readers didn't care much about.

If you hope to match their success, you must realize that what initially got them published was luck.  What made them successful was luck, and good marketing.  The same goes for many writers mentioned  in this thread.  

I love Mr. Butcher's story about crashing an invitation only writers, publishers, and agents mixer. http://www.jim-butcher.com/jim/

My point being, learn to write as well as you can.  Don't make intentional mistakes for styles sake.  Ultimately it's networking and luck that get you published.  And don't write anything like Meyer's book.  There's a glut of that type of thing in the markets right now.

Vodou is a Hatian religion.  Voodoo is an offshoot of Vodou and Catholicism practiced in the Deep South of the United States.  Hoodoo refers to the specific ritualism aspect.

That's just what my Magic, Witchcraft and Religion notes say.  To be honest I don't know much about the area.

For my necromancy; I blended the Cult of Mithras with some Ancient Egyptian Funerary rites and set the whole thing in rural Russia

Useflul tings for me have been

The Turkey city Lexicon

http://www.sfwa.org/2009/06/turkey-city-lexicon-a-primer-for-sf-workshops/

Beyond that, Stephen King's "On Writing," and Ursula L. Le Guin's "Steering the Craft" were very useful.  I would also be lost without my 1995 edition of the Little Brown Handbook, a college composition and grammar book. 

Other than that I read a lot of fiction, and I read it critically 

Black Magic Woman by Santana.  Slow, Sensual, Hypnotic.


"I got a Black Magic Woman.
I got a Black Magic Woman.
Yes, I got a Black Magic Woman,
She's got me so blind I can't see;
But she's a Black Magic Woman and
she's trying to make a devil out of me.

Don't turn your back on me, baby.
Don't turn your back on me, baby.
Yes, don't turn your back on me, baby,
Don't mess around with your tricks;
Don't turn your back on me, baby,
'cause you might just wake up my magic sticks.

You got your spell on me, baby.
You got your spell on me, baby.
Yes, you got your spell on me, baby,
Turnin' my heart into stone;
I need you so bad,
Magic Woman I can't leave you alone."