Hello, everyone!
Alright, so we’ll begin the Top 10 Book series next week! Why? Well… one, it took me a lot longer than I thought to actually come up with the list (books are hard! But I love them). Besides, why read about the books others have written when you can read about my books?
That’s cocky as hell, sorry about that. It sounded less… everything, really… in my head.
It really did take a while to narrow down the book selections, anyway, so until then we’re going to talk about one of the weirdest pieces of self-publishing fantasy novels: maps!
Wait, no, please stay.
Look, geography’s kind of a big deal when planning a story like A Place I Have Never Been. This is a part of that behind-the-scenes writer stuff that only shows up like 5% of the time in the story itself (well, more if there’s war involved.) But I want to draw your attention to that, historically.
Why is Hannibal crossing the alps with elephants so cool? 50% elephants, 50% ALPS. He took giant African animals up over some of the tallest mountains in the world. That’s insane.
What’s the most foolish thing to do besides going up against a Sicilian when death is on the line? Invading Russia in winter. A whole season can be an enemy!
Egypt and the Nile. The Amazon. Hawaii’s volcanoes.
Geography determines so much of culture and history that maybe it’s taken for granted? I don’t know. But I do think that people don’t really think about it as much as they should for the underlying reasons why things are the way they are. In an age of planes and cars and tunnels it’s sometimes difficult to think about how mountains and rivers and even oceans have impeded, or facilitated, movement. But so many civilizations started in river valleys for a reason, and people across history have headed for the hills (quite literally) to escape encroaching empires.
Maps are an important way to get that information across, and to help a reader visualize the world they’re about to enter. They can range from literal to downright insane, from the useful to the aesthetic, and all over the place practicality-wise.
And, if you’re not a professional (yo) they’re hard.
It’s a fun challenge, sure, so much of deciding to self-publish is. Casual cartography (this is what I’m calling it because I really have no idea and at this point I’m too embarrassed to look it up) is something I’ve played with for a while. The first official map of Telgora (that I think I’ve lost) was drawn in middle school. I knew nothing about geography then. Now I’ve a story set in a world that only somewhat follows the rules I’ve learned since then, and with arguably improved art.
Hand drawn maps are fun and all but they’re really hard to copy and print well. So since the original inception of Telgora, I’ve gone through dozens of computer-made maps (the very first, back when this was itself a NaNo draft, made in PowerPoint). Some were colored, some weren’t. Some printed better than others. I bought brushes for trees and mountains, played with textures and layers and all that other stuff from my one semester of computer design.
None of that, of course, helps my actual worldbuilding.
Do you know that rivers don’t normally bifurcate outside of deltas? I didn’t! Telgora has a bunch of them, and they’re kind of important to it. The capital city sits on a major river split! Look, I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, only that it happens infrequently enough for Wikipedia to have an article about “Unusual Drainage Systems.” What? You thought authors only googled things about murder and poisons and hiding bodies? Well I do that too. But unusual draining systems? That’s my jam.)
We’re just over a month out now from the release of the Complete Edition of A Place I Have Never Been. Honestly, it’s kind of an emotional feeling. It will be… done? This thing I’ve worked on for six-seven years now. There are other books in the series, plenty coming, but this is the one. While I always had the sense there was going to be a series, A Place I Have Never Been was it.
Even if the first draft was titled For Gods and Profit and there were places named Deathstate, Lakeiten State, and Northic Realm. Oh well. That made it in, sounding a little better, as everything else tied to the geography and its people rose with it.
This is the world I’ve made, maps and all, and I stand by it.
This is a place I have never been.
Join me?
There’s still a Lifestate, by the by.
An ode to the past maps of Telgora:
The “Final” Hand drawn version, now with PowerPoint-Added State lines and names!
One of the first attempts at drawing it on a computer, and trying to convince myself it was good.
The Fully Hand Drawn Map of the World
A slightly better computer-made version!
That version made neater, much more printer friendly!
Based on that, what will probably wind up being the final (or near final) version used for the Complete Edition!