On this page, we wish to answer all the questions you might have on T.I.P. Entertainment and Gushémal in particular. (All right, so it's more or less all the stuff we want to push onto you... This far, anyway. We're curious to find out what you wish to know and look forward to answering as best we can - while plugging madly away for our project.)
If something remains unclear, or if you have a question not at all answered below, please e-mail marc@gushemal.com. Our revered Mr. Wyman (the best writer who ever graced this earth) will try his best to answer your questions. His ingenious and encyclopedic mind shall certainly satisfy your every curiosity.
Marc H. Wyman
(as if you hadn't guessed I was heaping praise on myself...)
Please take note that some of these
statements may seem out of date. Most of this was written in late 2000, when we
were still hoping to attract good traffic on our site. Since then we've been
heading down the traditional road of "regular"/official publishing and
are currently trying to find an agent to represent both our Gushémal novels and
other works!
Stay tuned!
|
|
Gushémal is a fantasy world set within a fictitious, pseudo-medieval setting. Although we're mixing societies at various development stages, all in all, it is supposed to resemble the real world at the brink of gunpowder's introduction. It is a vast world, populated with races drawn both from classical fantasy heritage as well as our own imagination; and in some cases we have taken the classic image and tweaked it in the hope of creating something fresh. Thus far, we have designed one continent of this world, situated on the southern hemisphere. (That continent is also called Gushémal, since it appears to be the entire world to the inhabitants.) From the icy, southern tip of the continent (the Cape of Drowning) to the lush, tropical north with the mystical land of Modayre and the city of Chazevo, from the unforgiving mountains of the Laru'sedna Mountain Chain to the Arrufat peninsula, there we find the setting of our tales. There are many stories to be told. Some are the simple tales of a hero slaying a monster or rescuing maiden in distress, and some claim some political content as they deal with nations going to war, or fighting a cold war. Nations like Cayaboré, surrounded by hostile countries, having to find a way to survive. Or take the Arrufat peninsula, ravaged five hundred years ago by a heathen invasion - it has only been a few decades since the majority of Arrufat has been reconquered; and instead of a single nation, a quilt of dozens of duchies and tiny kingdoms has sprung up. Many stories, indeed. Some of them we wish to tell you, through the short stories appearing free of charge on this site, or through the entries in the other books (such as the Bestiary, or Paths to Divinity), or through - one day - full-sized novels. The first of those novels is currently in the works, "All the King's Men" tells a tough-as-nails story from the war between Cayaboré and Rek'atrednu. If we can get any news, you'll find them on the main index! Some stories we wish you to tell us, or just yourselves, through the role-playing game we're developing for Gushémal. Utilizing long experience in RPGs, we're hoping to create a game that will allow you to fully delve into this world, explore and experience its oddities - and have thrilling adventures, while you're at it. We have come to love Gushémal very much - perhaps most because it just refused to stay as small as we had intended it. Originally, all we wanted to do was write a single, independent, complete novel. Working on it, we came up with such a lot of other material - nations that we'd never get to visit in said single novel - that we could not limit ourselves. The world of Gushémal overwhelmed us with its richness and variety and liveliness. We hope you will find yourselves equally overwhelmed, and that you will come to love this world as well. And please, do write to us! We would very much love to hear your comments - and most importantly your encouragement! (Whoa, don't let us stoop to begging, all right?!)
Who are these writers, anyway? What, you never heard of us?! Shame on you! Oh, very well, it's very unlikely you've ever heard of Marc Wyman or Chris Bogues. Although Marc has published some fan material, he did so under a different name (and in Germany, the poor sap!). Marc has recently turned 30 and is currently
looking for a good burial place, figuring he won't last much longer now
that he is officially ancient. Any interested cemeteries please notify
him. But speak up, he's hard of hearing! (Waaaaahhhh!!!!) Check out his unnecessary but very satisfying Recent Reading List Chris "The Kid" is 27 years old and pretty upset that Marc is
writing his bio. Born in Poland, this confused young man keeps claiming he
is not Polish - not to mention that the joke's wearing thin by now. He
is 25 years old, was born in Argentina, and now lives in Buenos Aires. He
is a university graduate in translation and still wondering why he has
chosen such a career...
T.I.P. is a no-profit organization. (A fact that we dearly hope to change one day...) Via this website we will be publishing some of our materials completely free of charge. At this point, T.I.P. consists of three people - Marc H. Wyman and Chris Bogues as the founding fathers. (See the bios if you wish to find out more...) Guillermo Pereyra has recently joined our team as the translator into Spanish; we'll see about getting a bio out of him shortly. We have been fans of science fiction and fantasy for a long time, and the idea to create our own world(s) has also been a companion of ours for quite a while. So, after several starts and stops we have now committed in earnest to this creative work. Our first and thus far only product is the world of Gushémal, a fantasy setting. In the future, we plan on branching out into other areas, such as science fiction stories but also computer games or television scripts. Although we have plenty of ideas for such projects, right now we'll be focusing on Gushémal and trying to make this project succeed. Another plan that is dear to our hearts is to create a stable of authors who contribute to our projects with their own stories. Gushémal (as well as its sister projects, far in the future) is at its heart a shared-world concept; we have created the universe (and are busy populating it), but we'd like able writers to work their own magic within this setting - and quite possibly pushing its boundaries a little. The plan - or rather, the dream - is that these projects will enable us to publish "regular" novels set in the worlds we create, and that we can pull along other authors of our "stable" into the world of "regular publishing". Why would we wish to do that? Well, for one thing, we have been laboring pretty darn long to break into publishing ourselves, so we'd like to help others (along with ourselves, of course). For another, Gushémal is turning into a very big concept - so big that it can well support many writers and their stories. We would love to see Gushémal portrayed as richly as we believe it deserves, and for that, we'd like others to contribute.
How do you plan to turn this site profitable? Does this mean you're going to charge me for the materials on this site one day? First of all, the Gushémal materials on this site will remain free of charge for as long as they remain on the web. They are supposed to introduce this new world to you, the readers, as well as create a community of readers and/or RPG players. We're looking forward to discussing with you the ways in which to improve Gushémal - and that is much easier when access remains open to all. Now this doesn't sound as if we'd ever get a single dime out of Gushémal. That wouldn't exactly fulfill our dreams of living from writing and creating (rather than laboring at the office from 9 to 5). So where are we planning to get money from? Regular books! Gushémal's (story) world does not consist of only Cornell's adventure or any of the other Tales of Strange Adventures. As a matter of fact, these stories did not even start the whole idea. At the beginning, there was the tale of the "Nightwalker" - from the start intended as a series of novels. These novels will not appear on the website, rather we hope to sell them to a regular publisher and get them into bookstores. Suppose we succeed. Will we then stop with the freebies? Naaaah! The short stories will remain free and completely web-based, as are all the other sections of the site. Besides, we've already had too much fun inserting references into the stories that only make (real) sense when you have access to the background information. Okay, so what's the real deal here? Well, it's that we want to have lots of fun creating this world - with your aid. So far, it's been a blast ("shot by a dragon rod, and proud to have survived it"), and we're hoping that we'll continue having fun for years. (After all, there is a background storyline that we've mapped out for the next ten years of story continuity...)
Sure thing! That's exactly what we're hoping for! Allowing you to get involved in the creative process makes the world of Gushémal a lot more real to you. It also means that you could find a place for ideas that have been in your head for a while (or just popped in to say hello). And we hope that you'd just love Gushémal to be that place! There are a number of basic rules, though, and we hope you'll accept them as reasonable. First of all, every contribution you send to us becomes the property of T.I.P. Entertainment upon publication. In other words, we will be able to use it freely in the future and, potentially, change it. Your name as the creator will still appear and be acknowledged. We don't wish to claim your creation as our own! Texts: And if you wish to submit a full text, it has to be well written. As usual, that is one of the most precarious questions of all - what actually does that mean? Well, let's discard with the common statements of "good characterization", "style", etc. and just say, "It's well written if we, the editors, like it." At this time, we only accept contributions to the section of THE WORLD; that is Bestiary, Mythology, Nations and Places, Magic: Spells and Blessings. Please read everything we have published thus far in these sections to get a feel for what we are creating. Not to mention what kind of text we're looking for. (What are we looking for? In THE WORLD, all the entries are supposed to be written by travelers of Gushémal. You can create your own persona and write an account as this character would do it. Check it out, there are lots of possibilities...) As soon as the RPG section is fully up and functional, we will also accept material in that section. (If you should create a new monster for the Bestiary, we will ask you to submit the proper statistics for the game.) Contributions to THE STORIES section will be by invitation only. We consider this the crown jewels of Gushémal, so we would like to exercise strict editorial control. So if you wish to publish stories set in Gushémal, we would like you to contribute texts to THE WORLD first. Thus we can see whether you have the proper feel of our creation. (Sounds arrogant, don't it? Just obsessively protective, believe us. --- Okay, so there ain't much difference... And if you've got a great story - what the heck, CONVINCE US that it's marvelous!) Artwork: Your submissions should be readimade for use on this website, i.e. in electronic form. Aside from .gif and .jpg formats, we can also process .psd and .psp formats.
Would I get paid for contributing? Sorry, not a chance. We don't get paid! The best we can say here is that we're hoping to turn all of this profitable at some point later on. From that time on, we are planning to indeed pay you for your contributions. We don't know when that will be nor do we have any idea how much we would be paying. And we surely don't intend to forget about those people who have been loyal contributors. Sure, it's easy to promise something we can't hope to follow up on! But, all right, here's a handshake on this one: If one day we manage to turn this profitable (which ever way), we will pay all the contributors of (published) stories something. Yes, we mean the ones published prior to our making any profit.
Well, you see, every year, at easter, there's a
bunny who hides...
|
