I’m worldbuilding.

I always do, but occasionally I sit back and review.
It got me to thinking.
I write Paranormals, which means there are all manner of creatures running around.
In groups.
That requires a collective noun.
I’ve always been very fond of the term "A murder of crows", which got me to wondering…

What do you call a group of Vampires?
Here are some I found, I hope it’s a little helpful for some.

Vampires:

Coven, Clan, Pack, Kiss, Coterie.
(The place they inhabit tends to be called a Nest.)

Werewolves / Lycans / Werecats:

Pack

Demons:

Err… yeah. Not a clue. Still looking. Maybe "A Scare"?

Ghosts:

Haunt

Dragons:

Brood, Flight, Clutch

If I find any others, I’ll post them.
And if you have suggestions… put it in a comment.

Other words that describe groups of… anything, really, are:

Fraternity, Crew, Gang, Flock, Cluster, Herd, Family, Sect, Squad, Tribe, Legion, Cloud, Host, Swarm, Horde, Litter, Drove… the list goes on and on.
I’ve put up a page with collective nouns for people who are after the same thing.

http://www.fantasist.net/timeline.shtml

http://www.sfwa.org/writing/worldbuilding1.htm

Just two for now, will add more.

I saw Amanda, one of my critique partners, blog about the Banshee.

It kind of made me remember a lot of the fairy folklore I used to read about.

There are several types of sídhe (shee)

All of them come from the Tuatha Dé Danann, which were the Gods originally, but are now known as the Sídhe, and within the structure, you get some really bad fairies, to be sure.

The Baen Sídhe, the Banshee. Everyone knows about that screeching woman, I think. If you hear her wail your name… Ah, well. Hope you had a nice life. ‘Cause it’s over now.
The others… people know a lot less about.
The Leanan Sídhe tends to go after mortal lovers. If the guy consents, then he’s doomed. He’ll be her slave and the fairy will suck his life out of him until they waste away. (I can already hear the guys go ‘What a way to go’ heh.) Well, you’d think once they are dead, they’d be free, right? Not so. The only way you will leave a Leanan Sídhe is by finding someone else to take your place. However… If the man refuses to consent, then she becomes his slave. (I can see a terrific story there!)
The Daoine Sídhe are the most harmless of the lot. It more or less means "The Good Folk" or "The Gentry" and they are the most peaceful of the whole bunch.
The Sluagh Sídhe, the Fairy Host, are made up of restless spirits. As a whole, they are undead, or cursed, evil and nasty dead fairies.

Anyway, that’s a few of them.

How come I can get anything in ebook format — except reference books?

Wouldn’t it make sense to have something you’re not reading for pleasure, which would benefit from being searchable, which might cost a bomb to print and can benefit from revisions… in ebook format?
I’m talking about synonym books, thesauri, dictionaries, lists like A-Z of whatever, Name books… stuff like that.

Why is it that the ones I want, never seem to be sold as an electronic edition? Why not include a PDF version (after all, the dang thing is being submitted as a file, in the first place!) on a CD with the print version?

Pisses me off, it does…

I’m a sucker for Reference Books.
Well, okay. Show me a writer who isn’t.
Since a couple people ask me what I read / use for research, I’ve compiled a Reference Book List and put it with the other booklists.
Figured it might help out some people.

A rose by any other name smells just as sweet… or so the saying goes.

I’m toying with the idea of making up a language for my books. Toying being the operative word here. It’s not easy.
I mean, where do you start? I thought maybe just gibberish, but then… then I tripped across various other places and I thought no, I’m not going to make it up as I go along. It needs some structure, I want my guys to be able to string sentences together. For that, I’ll need a dictionary and grammar rules.

Eeek.

Then I thought how hard can it be?
Let me tell you — it’s hard. It has to make sense. So I started to build and English word list of very basic words. Come. Get. Do. Give. Take. and so on. Then the bug took hold big time and I started to look deeper and deeper.
God knows where it will lead, or whether I’ll ever use any of it, but for now it’s pretty good fun.
It’ll still be gibberish, but… never mind. I figure if I have to create an alternate world where things go bump in the night, then I might as well go the whole hog!