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Norton Creek Press

Classic Reprints and Old-Time Wisdom

Most of the best books ever written are out of print and forgotten. A few old books are considered classics and stay in print, but many equally good books vanish without a trace. At Norton Creek Press, we are bringing a relative handful of the very best books back into print. We read mountains of old books so you don’t have to.

Norton Creek Press is a family business run by Karen L. Black and Robert Plamondon (both writer/farmer/editor/engineers). We started out with a line of poultry books because, when we moved to our Oregon farm, we discovered that the more recent poultry books were not in tune with the needs of small farmers, while older books were. We read several hundred poultry publications, eventually choosing three to bring back into print (and writing a fourth). We’re branching out in directions that match our interests and experience, starting with back-to-the-land books. And there’s more to come!

Chickens and Poultrykeeping

Our line of classic poultry books cover many aspects of poultrykeeping. Most modern poultry books are disappointing, either because they are written at the post-graduate level for industry professionals or superficially for hobbyists. Thoughtful, thorough books that can be understood by the interested layman are no longer being written.… Read more ...

My Magic Items from Dragon Magazine

When I and the world were young, my professional writing career got its start with a tiny piece in The Dragon, the D&D magazine from TSR Hobbies. This was my writeup of a humorous cursed magic item, The Rod of Singing, appearing in their Bazaar of the Bizarre column. They paid me money for it!

In the end, I sold them three magic items in 1980 and 1981, reproduced below. I went on to write many other articles and eventually a whole book, Through Dungeons Deep: A Fantasy Gamers’ Handbook (Reston Publishing, 1981, reprinted much later by my under my Norton Creek Press label).

Rod of Singing

by Robert Plamondon, The Dragon #37, May, 1980

The Rod of Singing is a magical item usable by both Clerics and Magic-Users, although neither class will appreciate its charms.

When discovered, the Rod behaves like some useful rod (pick one from Greyhawk or DMG, but between five and 30 minutes after picking up this device, the magician or Cleric will begin to wave it as if conducting an imaginary band, singing loudly and off-key. This noise has a one-third chance per turn of attracting wandering monsters and, if the monsters are intelligent, with a -1 reaction penalty due to the poor music quality.… Read more ...

Running a D&D Game for First-Time Players, Especially Kids

Playing Dungeons & Dragons and similar tabletop role-playing games for the first time is a bewildering but never-to-be-forgotten experience. Whether it’s also a good experience is up to you, the Game Master.

So how do we stack the odds in the beginner’s favor? I have some tricks.

Adding a Beginner to an Existing Group

When introducing a beginner into an existing gaming group, I give them a warrior character to play, one at least as high-level as the best fighter in the party.

Then I give them the pitch: “You’re playing a big, stupid, fearless, reckless warrior. You’re at least as powerful as any other warrior in the group. You get along with your friends and love destroying your enemies. With any luck, you’ll die a glorious death and save the lives of your friends by the end of the evening.”

Beginners love this! The role is within their range, they’ll likely get a blaze of glory, and they don’t have to think about the long-term implications of anything. And they usually have a wonderful time, much better than the usual practice of making them run a Level One character who can’t do anything useful except die pointlessly after being dropped into a higher-level party.… Read more ...

Amelia B. Edwards and Egyptology

A charming blog post, Walk Like an Egyptian, talks about the connection between novelist and travel writer Amelia B. Edwards and the development of modern Egyptology.

After Edwards visited Egypt in 1873 and wrote A Thousand Miles up the Nile, she founded the Egypt Exploration Fund, which supported the efforts of Flinders Petrie, the founder of modern, scientific Egyptology. (Howard Carter, who discovered King Tuthankamen’s tomb, was a student of Petrie’s.)

The blog points out that women novelists and Egyptology go arm-in-arm. For instance, Agatha Christie (Death Comes as the End, Death on the Nile) and Elizabeth Peters (the Amelia Peabody novels) both spent time excavating along the banks of the Nile. In fact, it’s clear that Elizabeth Peters’ Amelia Peabody is based on Amelia B. Edwards, and the action in the first Amelia Peabody book, Crocodile on the Sandbank is based on Edwards’ voyage as told in A Thousand Miles up the Nile.

A Thousand Miles up the Nile is still available in various editions. My very own Norton Creek Press edition is, in my opinion, the best available, because it’s an exact reproduction of the lavishly illustrated second edition, with the whole story in one volume, will no illustrations omitted. … Read more ...

Dungeons & Dragons Back in Fashion?

The New Yorker just published an article, The Uncanny Resurrection of Dungeons & Dragons. Apparently even trendy people are playing role-playing games now!

In the years after I wrote Through Dungeons Deep: A Fantasy Gamers’ Handbook, one thing that’s surprised me is how well the old-school role-playing games have held up, and how few important changes have been made in the newer editions. One thing that surprises me is that tabletop role-playing games are still done almost entirely by hand, with little in the way of apps to assist with the mechanics, dice, and table lookups. It’s still 1980 that way. But that’s okay. 1980 is a great vintage for role-playing games.

In the New Yorker article, it mentions that some people are using role-playing games therapeutically, especially with kids, building a variety of skills more or less incidentally to the fascinating play. I’ve actually done a little of this, hosting several sessions at Corvallis’ Social Communications Clinic, with a group of middle-school kids. It was exactly as much fun as a barrel of monkeys!

Though dating from the early Eighties, Through Dungeons Deep is back in print, through the miracle of, “it’s my company and I can publish what I want.”… Read more ...

Current Examples of Ruth Stout’s No-Work Gardening

People still love Ruth Stout’s no-work, no-dig, permanent mulch gardening methods, as described in her book Gardening Without Work. Here are some recent blogs posts from people who use Ruth’s methods in their own gardens:

Growing Food With Greg: Gardening the Easy Way

Greg even includes a video, “How to Build a No-Till Garden in Six Minutes”:

David the Good’s No-Dig Garden Demonstration

And over on The Survival Gardener, David has collected videos of no-dig gardening from the large-scale to using an old tire as a planter.

These are just a few examples of the thousands of gardens worldwide using Ruth Stout’s methods.

Don’t have your copy of Gardening Without Work yet? I’m the publisher! See my Gardening Without Work page and order yours from Amazon or the Kindle Store or whatever.

Ten Dungeon Mastering Tips for D&D and Other RPG Campaigns

Robert Plamondon, author of Through Dungeons Deep: A Fantasy Gamers’ Handbook, shares ten DM’ing tips.

How can you make your role-playing campaign run more smoothly and be more fun for everyone? Here are ten quick dungeon mastering tips for any campaign:

Supply paper, pencils, and dice.

Counting on the players to provide even their most basic requirements doesn’t work, so don’t try. Always have more sharpened pencils available than players. Bring lots of paper. Have more dice than you can possibly use.

2. Enforce a “No touching” rule.

Some players can’t keep their hands off the other players. This is disgusting and must be stopped before the other players abandon your campaign just to get away from the offenders. Declare a “no touching” rule and enforce it. Come down hard on even minor infractions, or when the game gets exciting, the offenders won’t be able to control themselves and will be pawing and pummeling the other players like six-armed monkeys on acid. (“No touching” also includes “No pretending to touch, no brandishing, no looming over the other players.” They need to stay out of each other’s personal space.)

3. Enforce a “Hands off other people’s stuff” rule.

Players are not allowed to touch other people’s possessions without permission, or read their notes, or use their laptops, or anything like that.… Read more ...

Plotto: Avoid These Three Huge Mistakes

William Wallace Cook’s plot-suggestion system, Plotto, is woefully misunderstood, even by some of its biggest fans. Let’s take of three of the most basic mistakes that will prevent you from getting the most out of this wonderful plotting aid for writers and screenwriters.

Mistake 1: Taking Plot Hints Literally

At first glance, all plot suggestions in Plotto seem either too vague or too specific. The vague ones can be a bit of a puzzler, but the too-specific ones are easier to work with.

Let’s look at conflict #1419(a):

A, caught in a trap and held powerless under a huge burning glass, is saved by an eclipse of the sun.

This sounds a bit fantastic, but that’s not the problem, because it’s listed under “Occult and Fantastic” conflicts. No, the real problem is that readers often think you’re supposed to cut this conflict out and paste it down as-is, when, actually, you’re not supposed to. It’s only an example.

An example of what? Basically, of a situation featuring a self-operating killing machine that our hero escapes on his own, with the aid of a minor flaw in its operation.

Far-fetched? Hardly. This plot has been used before, in stories we’ve all heard of.… Read more ...

William Wallace Cook’s Plotto Featured on BBC

Plotto: The Master Book of All Plots, and its author, William Wallace Cook, were recently featured on BBC Radio, in a program called “Miles Jupp and the Plot Device.” Listen to it here.

Jupp goes into Cook’s tremendously prolific writing life, the difficulty of getting a copy of the original printing of Plotto, and the fact that Plotto does not drop a finished plot into your lap, but takes some effort to master. (Cook later wrote a Plotto instruction manual to clarify how to use the book, which I’ve posted to this site.)

Jupp also discusses Plotto’s influence on at least one other writer, Erle Stanley Gardner, the creator of Perry Mason. Every story introduced a new crime and new characters, which required a new plot.

How prolific was William Wallace Cook? At one point he worked with one, two, or even three stenographers at the same time, dictating one story to each in rotation, and filling in any gaps by sitting down at his typewriter and working on a different story.

Is Plotto a magic plotting device? I think it is, sort of. It’s not going to write your novel for you, but when I took Linda Hamner’s excellent scriptwriting course, it was clear that any movie has enough twists and turns to cause serious brain-freeze, and a TV series or a novel is even more daunting.… Read more ...