Life of an (Independent) Author – Part 2 – World Building as a Marketing Tool

Author Bio: Kenneth Bliss is an unabashed nerd, having read hundreds of sci-fi/fantasy books and played TTRPG and MMORPG games for decades. He turned his sights to the written word to express his love of God, sci-fi/fantasy and psionics. He lives near a small town in Michigan with his two cats.

Welcome back! In this second entry into my Life of an (Independent) Author series, I’m going to talk about the world building of my stories and how I plan to leverage it into marketing.

I have two books on the market which are noticeably different. The Accident is set in the year 2054 A.D. with AI systems in emergency vehicles and other futuristic elements. Canthany Rising is set in year zero with animals being exiled from the Garden of Eden to a world where role-playing rules govern their existence. You wouldn’t think these two worlds are connected in any way, but they are.

When I decided to start writing after I retired, I knew I wanted two, connected worlds. The Eric D’Tra’val character in The Accident would lead the Earth-based world and the humanoid animals of Canthany would be the other. I have a plan to bring the two together in the Eric D’Tra’val timeline, but there are a lot of set-up stories to write before that happens. In the meantime, how do I connect two worlds which are six-thousand years apart? With a time-traveler and some very long-lived creatures.

In Canthany Rising, there is a character only known as The Traveller (yes, I prefer the British spelling over the American). He is a mentor-type character who set up a building on Canthany called Traveller’s Emporium as a gathering place. This is not only a plot point, but an Easter egg. My LLC is called Traveller’s Emporium and my website’s store is called the same. So, when readers come to my site, imagine the thrill (or maybe the groan) of seeing the building from the book as part of my site.

In The Accident, there are devil characters which have lived since the beginning of the world. They know about Canthany and that The Traveller comes from Earth, but they don’t know when. This is a source of frustration for the devils, which will be brought out as an Easter egg in the follow up novelette to The Accident later this year.

The plan is to incorporate additional Easter eggs which reference each other’s world and events in each story. By doing this, I can leverage ads to note the worlds are connected and hopefully produce crossover readers from one world to the other. Now this may be somewhat unique because of how I’m connecting my worlds. I’ve planned for and built in ways to connect them.

For the authors out there, what can you use from your stories to promote your books? Do you have a setting that’s unusual? A character? How about a specific theme that’s prevalent in every story? Are all your stories already connected, or can you connect them in some way? What about with another author within your genre?

I ran into an author at the Realm Makers conference this year which talked about how she referenced a place in another author’s book in her own story. Later, they planted Easter eggs in each other’s future books. Now, there are some cool cross-author promotional thoughts going on!

Think about your own stories. Think outside the box. Talk to your author friends. See what connections you can develop.

Author website link: https://www.kebauthor.com

Amazon link Canthany Rising: https://www.amazon.com/Canthany-Rising-Christian-LitRPG-Adventure-ebook/dp/B0GZ598XPX

Amazon link The Accident: https://www.amazon.com/Accident-Story-Faith-Psionics-Supernatural-ebook/dp/B0FSH7NPPF

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