While I’m waiting for my beta readers to get back to me with feedback about Sammarynda Deep, my recently completed novel, I thought I might as well get started on the next one. It was a toss up between a couple of ideas but I finally settled on Arctica, a Victorianesque-steampunky-antique robotty-kind of thing with sea serpents, based on my Aurealis Awards nominated fantasy story of the same name. All that was missing was an actual plot, but I made up some twaddle on the train to Sydney yesterday en route to visit a friend. So, with 1200 words of synopsis now down, I think I shall draw myself a map of the proposed terrain. Yes, unlike the last one, this book shall be constructed in not only a timely fashion but also an orderly manner. The map comes FIRST. Trying to construct a map for Sammarynda Deep based on my own clues scattered throughout the text has been more than a little difficult. And, I suspect, geographically incredulous.
6 Comments
Put me in the queue for Arctica, I just read it in FWS and loved it. 🙂
thanks Martin
You are on a roll. Well done. I tried the drawing the map afterwards and it near drove me mad. However, as I don’t draw maps well, drawing them before is also difficult. I like to consider them works in progress and work on them all the time, especially when I think stuff up.
yeah, developing the map as you go is the way I expect. Thing is, I rarely ever look at the maps when I read a fantasy book so I don’t care about them as much as i should.
Go the steampunk, baby.
yeah. I’ve been fighting the urge… but you can only hold back for so long…