You all know by now that I love maps for fantasy books. Each time I draw one, it’s a little different, but I always try to do something.
Unsurprisingly, I drew a map for my newest book, The Assassin’s Bride, which comes out this Friday. Exciting!! This was a new experience for me in a couple ways, though because… I don’t know how many more books I’ll write in this world, if any, and I also drew it using tools that were new to me. My sweet husband gave me an iPad Air for our anniversary back in August, and I’ve loved having it to doodle on. And also to play Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp on, but that’s not as productive as drawing.
Using the iPad meant no Photoshop, though, so I’ve been getting used to using Procreate. There’s still a lot I don’t know how to do, and I wasn’t impressed with the text options, so I moved it to my PC to add text the old-fashioned Photoshop way. As far as the rest of the map goes, though… I like it.
For this particular story, I wanted to leave a lot of room to grow. If the story expands in later books, so will the map. This story begins in Kentoria, which is the largest country on this peninsula, but we venture north from there.
If we’ll venture elsewhere is yet to be seen. I’m not sure right now if I’ll write more stories like this, but the door is open if people enjoy it. If you want to know more, the best way to learn it is to preorder a copy of the book, give it a read, and then let me know which side characters you think need stories of their own. We’ll see what happens after that!
How do you think this map stacks up to the others I’ve done?