Creating Lishka’s Map
When I wrote the first draft of LISHKA, I created an initial map to show me general proximity of the major places in the book and also for a fun bit of worldbuilding. The original map was not to scale, which was just fine for a first draft.
When I wrote the prequal, THE WOLF QUEEN, I realized that I needed to better understand distance for timing out travel. As I wrote, I heard my editors’ voices in my head asking for consistent details on place locations and logical time to travel between them (editors, amiright?). To help myself remain consistent, I drew a more robust map, this time with a measured scale to ensure I understood number of miles between places. Whenever I had a character move from one place to another, I’d go to this map with ruler in hand to remind myself number of miles they would be travelling. Then I’d use that number to calculate how long the journey would take (accounting of course for species ability and difficulty of terrain).
Next, I drew the compass. I’m particularly proud of this, because normally where I would free-hand, I actually measured this one out! I did pull up some pictures to help me pick an overall compass aesthetic. There were many to choose from. Then I drew in the border, because what fantasy map doesn’t have a lovely, detailed border? As I finalized parts of the map, I traced over the pencil with a nice fine-tipped pen, using different weights for different areas of the map.
As of now, this hangs framed over my desk so I can look up for inspiration and reference when writing. At some point, I may enlist a professional to redo it for LISHKA’s published version… or maybe I’ll lean into the self-aspect and include this finished version!