About H.M. Turnbull
My name is H.M. Turnbull, and I’m a Scottish-Canadian fantasy writer living on Vancouver Island. In 2020, I published my first short story: The Faeringmen.
My website features a number of articles I’ve written on fantasy writing, with a focus on both linguistics and the ways fantasy can function as a means to communicate ideas and improve our own society.
Fantasy Writing
Explore H.M. Turnbull
I’ve written several articles on how you can create names for your characters. I suggest starting with this one if you’re new to linguistics.
For those of you who enjoy reading about bad literature, I recommend checking out my review of the worst book ever written.
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Short Story: The Faeringmen
The king’s health dwindles, and his eldest son and heir Dagda is poised to inherit the throne. But Dagda, believing his younger brother Ardal will make a better ruler, decides he must take drastic measures for the good of the realm. To this end, the prince seeks out a being with the power to alter the kingdom’s succession: one of the mysterious Faeringmen.
How to Make a Fantasy Map
Designed for writers to complement their fiction and gamers to complement their adventures, How To Make A Fantasy Map shows how you can create a simple or complex landscape to give your characters and plot room to move and mountains to climb…
Using entirely free, downloadable, open-source software, you’ll learn techniques for making high-quality, readable maps. Vector graphics may sound technical and scary for beginners, but with a minimal learning curve you’ll be shaping whole continents with ease.
Blog
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About the New Live-Action Avatar…
To be honest, I probably won’t be writing a review of the new Avatar adaptation. It’s not any good, but it won’t go down in history as one of the worst abominations of all time the way Shyamalan’s film did. Suffice it to say that it has no reason to exist, and society really needs…
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Why Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” Is the Worst Novel I’ve Ever Read
Find out why Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand is the worst novel I have ever read. With the threat of right-wing ultranationalism looming large with the support of figures like Donald Drumpf and Ben Shapiro, I feel it’s important for us on the left to understand just how our Enemy thinks. Having spent most of…
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Learn to Spell Your Character Names
If you want your readers to have an easy time pronouncing the names in your story, then this is the article for you. In my experience, the best way to spell a character name you’ve invented is this: to spell the name so that it the reader understands how they should pronounce it. This article will…
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The Lord of the Rings Explained – The Voice of Saruman
Welcome back to my series of posts about how J.R.R. Tolkien’s novel The Lord of the Rings differs from its film adaptations. Today, it’s time to look at one of the novel’s greatest dialogues, but also at how Saruman died in the movie, because despite some similarities, the fallen wizard’s fate is markedly different in…
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The Lord of the Rings Explained – The Mercy of Samwise Gamgee
Welcome back to my series of posts exploring how J.R.R. Tolkien’s novel The Lord of the Rings is vastly superior to its film adaptations. This one is perhaps the most significant thematic change in all of Peter Jackson’s movie trilogy. Today we’ll take a look at something the films neglected: the culmination of the chief…
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The Lord of the Rings Explained – Reinforcements at Helm’s Deep
Welcome back to my series of posts detailing the differences between J.R.R. Tolkien’s novel The Lord of the Rings and its film adaptations. Remember that scene in the film where a host of elves led by Haldir arrives at the Hornburg to fight alongside the Rohirrim? Well, that never happened in the book. Reinforcements do…