Are you a speculative fiction writer looking to create a captivating fantasy or sci-fi series? Do you struggle to keep track of your story-world's intricate details, character arcs, and overarching themes? If so, it's time to consider creating a Series Notebook. A Series Notebook is a comprehensive tool that helps you develop and maintain consistency throughout your speculative fiction series. It serves as a centralized resource that details the scope, rules, concepts, themes, characters and parameters of the story-world in which your series takes place. By having all this information organized and easily accessible, you can focus on crafting engaging stories without getting lost in the details. The "series bibles" used in television production inspire my use of a Series Notebook. These bibles are contain all the key information about a TV series, including character profiles, plot outlines and worldbuilding elements. They ensure everyone involved in the production, from writers to actors to set designers, clearly understands the series' vision and maintains consistency across episodes and seasons. Authors such as Brian Sanderson have reference to their use of series notebooks. When I was at the 20 Books Vegas conference in 2022, a panel of sci-fi authors mentioned they write about 50-75,000 words about the setting before they start the first novel. It is useful for managing your worldbuilding. (BTW, author James Peet has a good presentation on geography and worldbuilding.) This would fit with the use of a series notebook. The notebook helps me organize my writing process. I've used one in various forms over the years, both in Scrivener and Markdown/GitHub. Here's how I organize mine, roughly: 1. Overview (tagline, premise, target audience, genre and tropes, themes and motifs)...

Overall, the past week has been quiet. As I look over my notes, so little "progress" was made. Is that a uniquely American concern---that I did not do enough in my spare time---or am I one of those odd types? I said I would give writing with Obsidian a whirl. As whirls go, it was not as dizzying as I hoped. But I started in on a scene. I connected my old GitHub-based PDF/ePub compiler and shook some of those cobwebs out. It felt good. For a brief time, I felt productive. At least as productive as I would be with Scrivener. I need to spend more time to settle in. That's my project for the week. I've opened the compiler repository, but will share when things are working. My entertainment is a bit more intentional. I finished Masters of the Air. I love history, and this was history adjacent. They did a better job with storytelling than I think they did with The Pacific, which I think is a shame since those in the Pacific Theater had a much tougher fight and was overshadowed by the European Theater. After reading Ian Toll's Pacific War trilogy, I commented to a friend, "did you know the Navy had a role in World War 2." She was a formal Navy officer, and it was a fun way to get her goat. Speaking of, I'll have to read his Six Frigates book. Right now, I'm listening to Stalin's War. I said "intentional," but geeking out on history is not that. While I continue to cruise through my Postal Marines series at a snail's pace, I'm looking at a bit more fantasy. While I...