First! I’ll be at the Boskone conference in Boston this weekend. If you’re around and want to link up, please contact me.
Second! Progress on the maps: After some finagling, resizing the text and font, and positioning continents just so, here’s my first pass at the Western Hemisphere of Earn, containing some relevant locations in novel #3:
The final size has to be 622×520, with the location tags large enough to be legible on phones and e-readers. Although it’s in the ballpark, the above isn’t the right size and the text still needs work.
Regardless, I’m pretty happy with it as a first pass. It has the information it’s supposed to convey, with just a little bit of artistry, but it’s not over-glitzed. That product represents about 1-2 hours of hand sketching, 2 hours of scanning & tinkering, and another 2 hours futzing around in Word and Paint. I still need to tinker more to get it to the right size, but I’m going to put it on the shelf for now and move on to the first revision of the manuscript. The mega-schedule has slipped a couple weeks to the right, and I don’t want to slip any more. Plus, while editing I may find more locations I need to include on the maps, so it doesn’t make sense to sink too much time into them right now.
But, there you have it. Enjoy!