Organized by both timeframe and subject, the collection presents the clearest maps I’ve ever found in a history book, which usually attempt to cram far too much information into a single, static map. With Atlas of Medieval Europe, you can instead experience a kind of stop-motion animation as you watch Europe evolve over the course of a few centuries.
Impressions Map
I somehow wrote almost all of Impressions, which features a significant amount of travel for Raven, and lots of luxuriating in the worldbuilding, without even a sketch of a map. Only when my writing group began going through the story did I think to rectify the story’s tardy cartographic situation.
Diagrams in Storytelling
I want to consider what the best way, from a storytelling perspective, is to convey this information to my readers. A diagram or solar system map might work, but it isn’t all that elegant.
Maps and World-Building
I like books with maps in the front, and since you've found a way to a publishing website that primarily focuses these days on fantasy and science fiction, there's a good chance that you share my opinion. Although I'm not a reader who spends hours pouring over the maps at the front, trying to chart out the course that the characters took, or catch the author in a continuity mistake regarding the reasonable travel time between two cities, I do consider a map in the front as a sort of mark of merit. If the author went to the time and trouble to have a map included, then there's a better chance that it's a book I'm going to want to read.
Writing Updates
Formal world building for the Blood Magic series is slow going, not helped by the fact that it is far more exciting to write new content for stories than it is to dig through existing stories and write up what is essentially a textbook on my imaginary world. However, I made some good progress this past weekend, completing the rough draft of the Blood Magic world map, and a second draft to follow on.
Cartography
One of the distinguishing features of the speculative fiction genre in its published form is the maps. Avid readers of fantasy and science fiction are known to pour over the maps included in the books they read, maps describing fantastical worlds and universes in vivid detail. It was perhaps inevitable, therefore, that I would at some point be obliged to create maps to go along with the stories I've written or am in the process of writing.
IGC Publishing 