Insert detail here

 This week I've  been working on short stories as well as a new novel.  I'm creating completely new text for the first time in a while, that that's meant I have to invent absolutely everything.

The scene I'm working on in my novel is of a vet collecting a wild bear so that he can have his broken leg fixed.  To make it convincing, it had to include details of darting the animal with anaesthetic, and make reference to the dose being related to the animal's body weight.  It all goes wrong, of course, and the bear fights the anaesthetic and attacks the vet before it finally falls asleep.

The vet is on his own there, with only the ambulance's AI for support, so I had to work out how he could get a huge bear into a crate.  That led to details about drones.  I've ended up with a dart drone which fires the anaesthetic and two heavy-duty lift drones which carry the bear to the crate.

I wanted to put the bear into cryogenic suspension for the flight back to the hospital, so also I needed to work out how to get the crate he'd been put into inside a cryo pod for the journey.

That was lots of tech detail, but I've also gone to the other extreme this week too.  I saw a call out on Twitter for a magazine wanting cosy fantasy stories.  One of the things an editor wanted to see was stories about a magical tea rooms.  

I immediately got the idea for putting a Guinan-like figure into a fantasy setting.  Like the Star Trek character, she'll be a sort of counsellor.  Everyone thinks she's some kind of mystic, but in reality all she is is a human woman who listens properly to people.  The tea rooms boast a golden teapot which is a wizard's illusion, and they expand in size to accommodate the clientele, which can include dragons and unicorns. 

Now I was on a roll, and I wanted to flip some standard fantasy tropes around.  I decided I was going  to challenge the accepted images of fantasy races.  So the first character I introduced was an atypical dwarf. He's taller than  average, and he's streaked his dark brown hair with purple and silver.  He flashes his emerald painted nails at my counsellor, who thinks he must be off to another modelling job.

I have a unicorn who has painted the colours of the asexual flag onto her horn, and another dwarf struggling to accept his asexual identity.  I had a lot of fun with that story, while making a point about choosing our own identities.

My second fantasy story is about people who fly, so I'm having to imagine how they would see the world.  My main character is a sort of blacksmith who decorates wingtips with precious metals.  She has inherited her father's workshop, and has just been refused membership of the guild.  Because she's a woman, of course.  The story will be about her building a successful business without the guild and making it irrelevant.

All these stories require a lot of detail, and I've had to stretch my invention muscles a lot this week.