A (relatively) short list of books that provide information about magic, weapons, culture, and clothing, amongst other things, along with a couple that provide hints of how best to weave all of this together to craft a 'realistic' fictional milieu. 

 
Inspiration 
 
Alberto Manguel & Gianni Guadalupi, The Dictionary of Imaginary Places, Harcourt Brace, 2000
— a traveller's guide to the imaginary places on Earth, taken from the literature of the world. A great book to inspire the imagination.


Book...
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My 2012 Writer's Market Deluxe Edition turned up in the post today. It is, yet again, a massive brick of a book. On first glance through, I see several interesting articles and probably about 700 pages worth of markets. On first browse I also see that the vast majority of those markets are North American. That's only to be expected, I suppose, from an American publisher, but you'd think they'd put something on the cover to indicate that, a tag saying 'North American Edition' would be good. Th...
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