I mean, just, like, one or two tears. But I uploaded How To Create Cultures to the printers today, and in 24-48 hours I should be able to order a physical proof copy.
The book is done, you guys.
The map I drew for it may have taken 5 hours to draw and process (no kidding), but the book itself is part of From The Ground Up, which I first pitched almost exactly six years ago. I have wept blood for this book, and blistered my fingers formatting the 95 references (that’s just for this 40k section), and tweaked and polished and clarified and formatted, restructured and re-researched, bribed people for feedback and revised and clarified some more, and now? Now the book is done.
Obviously, I have a read of the proof copy to go, and no doubt I’ll find the double-bunch of typos that always seem to make it through, and I still have to format the ebook – but that’s light work. It’s cleaning off the desk when you’ve finished the project; washing the dishes after finishing the cake.
The grunt work, the blood-sweat-tears, is over, and I am so, so proud of the result.
It struck me again in the last couple of days as I’ve been going through formatting all the references: I really did research my lil heart out for this book. In it, you can learn about everything from the domestication of dogs to the trend for wearing baby-poo yellow; for the speculated reasons men started wearing their hair short to the links between plough-based agriculture and systemic sexism; from what climate ball games originate in to why spices are useful in the tropics; from the most likely point for any population to fail to what they have to do to make sure they don’t.
What food is native to each climate, and how does that evolve into a cuisine? How does technology influence this cuisine? What economic developments are most likely in each locale? How does a population’s place on the demographic transition timeline impact their economy?
What’s frost upheaval? Why is biodiversity important? How did skin colour get tied up with beauty in the first place? Why is the lean-and-toned look currently ‘in’ in western society? What sound do desert sands make? How do animals survive in the desert? Where is the littoral zone? When did people start walking heel-first?
SO. MANY. QUESTIONS.
And every single one of these (and more) is answered in How To Create Cultures. Grab an ebook on preorder today, or look for the print preorders in 2-3 weeks (I’ll announce here, of course – if you don’t want to miss it, sign up in the sidebar (or below if you’re on a mobile device) to get my blog updates in your inbox).
You guys. The book is done.
