{"id":3517,"date":"2022-03-29T10:54:13","date_gmt":"2022-03-29T10:54:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/?p=3517"},"modified":"2022-03-29T10:54:13","modified_gmt":"2022-03-29T10:54:13","slug":"post-5-thoughts-on-maps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/2022\/03\/post-5-thoughts-on-maps\/","title":{"rendered":"Post 5: Thoughts on maps"},"content":{"rendered":"

My cunning plan to reread all nine of the published Brightmoon books got bogged down in the pesky business of releasing a new Regency romance, so I\u2019m a little behind schedule with the reading, but in the meantime, I\u2019ve been thinking a little bit about maps.<\/p>\n

Every self-respecting fantasy has maps, right? Well, mine didn\u2019t, partly because the early books were fairly localised, so there wasn\u2019t really much need for one, so it was quite a long time before I started doodling on bits of paper to try to pull together the various places. But largely, I confess, it was because I didn\u2019t know anyone who would make one for me and I didn\u2019t have the skills to do it. Not an insuperable problem, probably, but somehow I never got round to making a full map of the Brightmoon world, beyond those doodles.<\/p>\n

But then along came The Second God, with a full-blown war with multiple factions, spread over quite a large area. Suddenly, I needed a map, and I realised my readers would need one too. Luckily, at that time I had an online friend with the skills or software or both to do something about it, so I ended up getting her to turn my back-of-the-envelope sketches into something a bit prettier.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Of course, that\u2019s a very small part of the Brightmoon world, and I know I\u2019ll have to come up with a proper map eventually. Being a control freak, I\u2019d really like to do it myself, but there\u2019s that tricky business of not having a clue, or the software to help. But many moons ago, I supported a Kickstarter for some mapping software, called Other World Mapper. They got their funding and they\u2019re still developing it, so every so often I get an email telling me about a new version. One of those came in a few days ago, so this time I actually downloaded the software and started playing around with it.<\/p>\n

And actually, it\u2019s pretty cool, it has lots of flexibility and it has a help file, but like a lot of help files, it\u2019s better at telling you what all the cool gadgets do than explain basics like how do I draw an island, and how do I add a mountain range. Happily, YouTube has a bunch of stuff, so I\u2019m watching those in odd moments.<\/p>\n

And for your amusement, here\u2019s the back-of-the-envelope sketch that will one day, if the moons align, be a proper fantasy map. And this, too, is not the whole world, by any means. It\u2019s merely the western half of the southern hemisphere continent. But see that little island up above the squiggly line? That\u2019s Callina, which is where all the northern hemisphere action happens. It probably won\u2019t stay in that shape, since I have some logistical issues to resolve, but that is pretty much its location.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My cunning plan to reread all nine of the published Brightmoon books got bogged down in the pesky business of releasing a new Regency romance, so I\u2019m a little behind schedule with the reading, but in the meantime, I\u2019ve been thinking a little bit about maps. Every self-respecting fantasy has maps, right? Well, mine didn\u2019t, partly because the early books were fairly localised, so there wasn\u2019t really much need for one, so it was quite a long time before I started doodling on bits of paper to try to pull together the various places. But largely, I confess, it was because I didn\u2019t know anyone who would make one for me and I didn\u2019t have the skills to do it. Not an insuperable problem, probably, but somehow I never got round to making a full map of the Brightmoon world, beyond those doodles. But then along came The Second God, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[19,7,9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3517"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3517"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3517\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3521,"href":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3517\/revisions\/3521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}