*Catherine wanders out to the stage and stares quizzically at the few readers*

How do you recap a slow month?

Do you attempt to throw the recap out the window?

Or do you slog through?

Somehow, right now, slogging through seems to be a good idea.

*said no reader ever*


1. Camp NaNo happened - and it went okay?? It wasn't my strongest performance, but I managed to get to my official goal, so.....though my unofficial ones hardly got accomplished at all. I'm not sure if I'll do a recap at all - it really was uneventful. Which is unusual for NaNo.

2. I bought 4 new books. Namely, Kilmeny of the Orchard by L.M. Montgomery, Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy by Ally Carter, Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover by Ally Carter, and Mossflower by Brian Jacques. Three of them were books that I was already familiar with, but Mossflower was a shot in the dark. And, to make a long story short, I LOVED it!

3. I have discovered a new favorite TV show. It's the NBC show American Ninja Warrior. IDK, something about stunt people flying through the air and scaling walls really gets me excited. Though I could do without the short shorts and tanks though.

4. I also found a new artist that I like - Lindsey Sterling. I had listened to some of her stuff before, but after seeing her new single "The Upside" on The Capital Fourth, I decided to look into more of her stuff. My pop playlist got a nice boost, LOL.




For Working by Candlelight, I wrote 3 posts: Music in my Ears: Summer 2019 Edition, In the Kitchen: Marble Pudding Dessert, and Christmas in July: The Muff Project. Now that the craziness has calmed down for a time, I'll be able to write posts about my veil, a new recipe and the state of things of OVM in August!

For Rebelling Muse, I wrote 5 posts: An Attempt to Chart the Uncharted, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Triple Tag Fun and Lessons I Learned from Anne Shirley. In August, I plan on knocking out the Summer Book Tag, and then....I'm not sure?

I am still on hiatus for both Maidens for Mary and Rebellious Writing, but I am involved in the Classic Blog Party that is happening in August! I've also been started to write some posts for M4M for when I come back in September.




1. Fulfill my NaNo goal of 60 hours, working on TWR/FW. 

I did accomplish this, as mentioned. Though I'm not sure exactly how much time I actually devoted to working - all the time logs were estimated. *shrugs*


2. Finish FW's section of Project Blueprint, and update TWR's as necessary. 

This didn't happen quite as I planned, and now there are several pages worth of world-building that have to be added in. *twirls fingers*

What I will do for a one-stop shop.....


3. Make plot sketches of FTC. 

NOPE. I barely got TWR's settled. FTC didn't even get touched. Oh well, more editing for me later...


Well, that was a bit of a disappointment. But I kinda expected it - since LIFE's roller coaster was back in session....

Now to check the yearly goals....

1. Finish The White Rose - and have it ready for betas by May at the earliest.

While I barely added 5K words in during Camp, I worked through some major developmental roadblocks during Camp. Now the draft is approaching 39K words *screams*. Once I get it up to 65K (which hopefully will include all the missing plot scenes), the beta call will go out!! 

2. Finish Project Blueprint

Some of TWR and FW's sections were worked on, but nothing was completed. *shrugs* 

3. Get more print books.

4 new fiction books were added to my shelves Kilmeny of the Orchard by L.M. Montgomery, Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy by Ally Carter, Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover by Ally Carter, and Mossflower by Brian Jacques. And one non-fiction was also added, but what consequence is that? 

Baby steps, Catherine. Baby steps.

Well now that July is over (almost), what is on the docket for August?

August Goals:


1. Work towards the 30K goal of additions to The White Rose
2. Update TWR's section of Project Blueprint

It's definitely a short list, but the ducks are still not in a row and so I'd like to keep the goals manageable for now.




Wow, I think this is one of the shortest recaps that I've ever done in a long while...

How about you, dear readers? What has been going on in your corner of the world? 

Scribbingly yours,

Catherine

Hello all!

My dear friends Grace and Katherine Avender are having an Anne of Green Gables blog party these last few days of July! I highly recommend that you go check out their blog, Maidens of Green Gables. They have loads of fun posts!

Button for the party :)

I wasn't sure if I would be able to participate, but then on a whim I dug out my DVD of Anne of Green Gables (the SE version, you know) yesterday. As I was re-watching this favorite, I started compiling a list of "lessons" that I've learned from my favorite literary heroine.




*pats poor Anne awkwardly*


1. "Scrapes" are life's entertaining

How many times have we messed up and then laughed afterwards?

It took me quite a ways to get to the stage when I could laugh at my silly mistakes without dying of embarrassment.



But, especially in my blogging experience, "scrapes" make for the best stories. Sharing those embarrassing mistakes really helped me to grow as a person.


2. Poetry is to be appreciated

I never really understood the power of poetry, or poetry as an art form, until I first watched Sullivan's Entertainment version of Anne of Green Gables. To this day, "The Lady of Shalott" remains one of my favorite epic poems.

By the way, you can see an actual dramatic recreation of Tennyson's masterpiece (not one marred by a leaky dinghy) in the video below:



3. Love may take you unawares

I think Anne and Gilbert's romance is one of the most well done in literary history because of it's realism. Let's be quite honest, sometimes the girl hasn't a clue what a perfect guy for her looks like. It should be an ultimate reminder that God is the only perfect matchmaker :).




4. Always label things - especially old bottles of something

Getting drunk on currant wine is not an experience that I wish to partake in. Nor do I really want liniment in my cakes. Smells and visuals don't always help either. So for the sake of yourself and others, label things.



5. Always keep a bosum friend

Whether we admit it or not, every woman needs a sister. Not necessarily a natural born sister, but a soul sister - one that can understand, scold, and love unconditionally. The ones that we spill to. The ones that we can let our hair down and be the craziest versions of ourselves with.

Every Anne needs a Diana. Like Anne, I never had a natural sister....much to my eternal chagrin. But, I was blessed with many close friendships with other girls and women. While I consider many fellow Catholic women my "sisters" (the quotes are quite necessary), there is only one that has Diana's role in my life. And I'm sure you know who that is. *winks*




6. It's okay to a little....unconventional

What town would be half interesting if we didn't have odd characters running about?

Would Anne be so lovable if she didn't have her crazy quirks?

I highly doubt both.

I dare say, as a rather odd person myself, that while you may not have a score of friends trailing behind you, someone will like you for being yourself.


7. Thrilling names lift up the ordinary

A pond can never be a pond when it is the "Lake of Shining Waters." Am I right?

I've always been a lover of names, but whether Anne instilled that into me....I will never know. Surely, the fact that I believe that names with a meaning make it so much more special can only come from our starry-eyed heroine.


8. Appreciate the beauty of the surroundings

A little bird song lightens the soul. The sight of tall mountains inspires us to go higher. The wide expanse of the ocean reminds us of our littleness.

God uses beauty of nature to prod us little humans, if we can only see it. I think Anne certainly knew that.


9. Spelling really does matter




That "E" makes all the difference sometimes. You wouldn't think that adding or dropping a little letter like that one would, but it does!

Take for example:

Catherine Hawthorn vs. Catherine Hawthorne

I actually have a small irritation when people add the "e" at the end of Hawthorn. While I realize that the actual surname has an "e" at the end, I actually took this name from the actual tree, which doesn't have the "e". With the fact that "Catherine" has an "e" on the end, the other "e" just seems too extra.


10. Sometimes you just need to fill the silence.

While silence can be great from a spiritual sense, there are certain times when silence can be maddening. Like when you're trying to soothe an awkward situation over. Or you're so nervous that it must spill out before spinning your brain.

And that concludes the post!



And now I wish to hear from you! What lessons have you learned from Anne Shirley? Which is your favorite version of Anne's story - the books, the Sullivan Movies, or the mini-series Green Gables Fables? Tell me all in the comments below! 

Scribbingly yours,

Catherine

Hello all!

So I wasn't expecting to pick up my map again once I got to the stage that I last showed you. After all, I had worked well over 10 hours on it, you would think that I would have gotten tired of it.

Well, I must have caught some sort of map-making bug. Or maybe it was the realization that continents don't do me much good. After all, where are the borders? Where are the cities? What about all the cool geographical features?

You see, I didn't realize until too late that there is a whole geographical section in the Roll for Fantasy Map Maker. Had I realized that, and if it didn't require me to re-jigsaw the country in question back on there, and if the scaling had been right...well, there may have been a completely different map to show you.

However, I fell down a completely different rabbit hole.

You see, I couldn't really steal any of the symbols on the mapmaker. For one, that would be rather immoral (there are such things as copyrights, after all), and for another, they wouldn't transfer over very well.

And so I looked for another solution. And where did I go?

Back to YouTube and the GIMP mapping tutorials.

Now, I still didn't quite get all what they were doing with the water or the land and all the layer stuff (still a little over my head) BUT....

I discovered these little tools called "brushes" that can be used for both Photoshop and GIMP. They were like little stamps that you could stick on your picture. All you need to do is download the set, select the ABR file, and stick it in the "brushes" folder, which will be on your hard-drive under users/program files/gimp 2.8. Once you refresh the brushes on GIMP, you should be able to access them.

Anyway, when I saw how the brushes worked, I immediately looked for them. Specifically, ones that were licensed for use in both personal and commercial projects.

(Side note: it's extremely important that you check the licensing requirements for free fonts, free brushes, photographs and other media - especially if you indie-publish. The last thing you need is a copyright lawsuit!)

Anyway, there are quite a few artists that have created "brush packs" of symbols that are commonly used on maps - often called Cartography Brushes. Each set is different, but most include symbols for cities, natural things like mountains and trees, etc.

But I'm telling you now, you don't need to look further than K.M. Alexander's Free Stuff Page, which you can access HERE. 

Because, he has created not one but NINE brush sets. They are created from real map symbols, most from maps dating from the 1600s and 1700s. They really work well for any kind of fantasy map, and even for historical fiction as well!
And the best part - IT IS FREE. For commercial use as well as personal! And they are amazing! Seriously, the workmanship is really awesome, I'm shocked that he's not selling the things. I mean, the poor broke college graduate part of me was super grateful, but STILL. He'd make a killing if he did, I'm sure.

So I may have gotten a little obsessed, because I picked up six of the nine sets. *hides*

BUT - there is such a variety with all of them that it is really hard not to collect them. I think I spent an hour or so just playing around with the different brushes, especially the sizing of them. I will say, that if you're using GIMP, for goodness sake, use the brushes when you're in the paintbrush mode. I tried it in airbrush mode and it didn't work at all!

Readers: Okay, enough with the brushes, Catherine. We get it! We came to see MAPs?! 

Oh right, yes. Sorry. Moving on!

So the first thing that I did was to open the map up in Paint again and start to work on the rivers. I chose Paint for this step because I had better chance of matching the color, and the pencil in Paint was much easier to control. That and I could pixelate the banks of the river so they had shadows so they looked like real rivers - see, there was reason why I paid attention to these things!

I placed a lot of random river deltas, especially in the area of Jaqaru, so those were interesting to course out. Not all the rivers and lakes are actually in, even at this very moment. This is because regions and cities still haven't been plotted yet, and I really don't need a town in the middle of a future lake. I mean, that's traumatic enough in real life!

Once the main rivers were coursed, it suddenly cemented several different things. For one, Jaqaru is now proven to have a rainforest - and one of the rivers serves as a border to Shaltei. Another river-infested country proved to be Ceberlandon - but that makes sense since there is a lot of water-powered manufacturing there.

I next made the border lines to delineate all of the countries.



Okay the rivers are harder to see than I thought. But I'll walk you guys through where everything is:

On the northern continent, Shaltei is on the far left side. In between the river that stretches the entire continent and the brown line is Jaqaru. On the right side is Maisaka.

On the southern continent, Ceberlandon is made up of the island and the right side up to that brown line. The small country above it is Gwydion. To the immediate left of both is Aistaraina. And to the north is Duventoliel, the country in which our story is based in.
And then Ravndal is on the islands off Duventoliel's coast.

Now, those border lines are really ugly. And it makes much more sense when there is a physical border and not a silly imaginary line, anyway. And so, off to find what kind of physical borders I can come up with....

Greetings and salutations to you dear readers!

So for this Taggy Tuesday, I'm giving y'all a triple dose of tags. That's right, all the tags that I was tagged to do this year, I'm doing all at once. Only because two are small, and the other was lonely.

This first tag is the #CoverLove Tag. I was tagged by Allison @ the little bookworm, whom I thank from the bottom of my heart. You can see her original post HERE.

Rules:

1. Thank the blogger who tagged you and link back to their blog
2. Answer the seven questions your nominator gave you
3. Create seven new #CoverLove Tag questions
4. Nominate seven other bloggers and let them know they've been tagged

1. Most aesthetic-y book cover

Goodreads

I love bright eye-catching colors, and this cover has them in abundance. It's the thing that drew me to this book and I'm now forever grateful to the cover artist because this is one of my favorite books!

2. Favorite autumn book cover

Goodreads

I had a hard time finding an autumn cover, and this was the closest one I could find. It's got all the right rusty browns and olives greens for an autumn cover, no?


3. Least favorite cover edition of a good book

Goodreads

As far as I know, this is the only cover that goes with this book. It's a really awesome book but my gosh! What an ugly cover!


4. Cover with a face / person on it

Goodreads

Well there ya go. One with two faces on it and a very smashing cover to boot. Can't get much better than that, can you?

5. Amazing cover on a book you hate

Goodreads

I was really disappointed with the fact that there was so much content in this book because the cover was really intriguing!!! *huffs in disgust*


6. Book you bought / read primarily because of the gorgeous cover

Goodreads

I mean, I love Jen Turano anyway (historic inaccuracies aside), but this cover made me snatch up this freebie really really quickly. I mean, THE COLORS!!! They are so blooming gorgeous....

7. Book cover with a place / location

Goodreads

Another really hard one, so I decided to pick the book that was based in a Civil War park...the cover at least reflects that. I thought it was a really cool concept for a cover :)

7 new CoverLove Questions:


1.  Favorite cover of one of your favorite author's books
2.  A cover featuring a sunset
3.  A cover with lots of eye-popping color
4.  Favorite romantic cover
5.  A cover with a historic dress you would wear
6.  Favorite cover off of a religious book
7.  Favorite cover that has water on it (i.e. waterfall, rain, etc.)


I tag:

Anyone who love aesthetics covers :)

Seriously, go ahead. You need a reason to look at pretty covers.


For this second tag, I treat you to a superlative challenge known as the Voted Most Likely Tag. Think of a high school yearbook and jack up the ridiculousness of the titles...which then get gifted to your characters. Sounds like fun, right?

Sarah Rodecker @ Pen of a Ready Writer gave me this tag and I thank her heartily. You can see her original post HERE. 

Rules:

1. Thank the blogger who tagged you.
2. Include this link: https://phoebeamorryce.wordpress.com/2018/10/15/voted-most-likely/
3. Use your own original characters, not anyone else's.
4. Tag at least five people.

~ Most Likely to Be a Poet ~

That would most definitely be Janina, my MC from The White Rose. She is, after all, the Patroness of the Bards in Duventoliel. She loves poetry and even composes some occasionally - though she readily admits that it is no good. 




~ Most Likely to Dance in the Rain ~

Grace from Fair Winds. She is the most joyful out of all of my characters thus far, and wouldn't mind a little dampness every now and then. Pity for her, her older sister has a deadly fear of people catching cold....



~ Most Likely to Look Good in a Kilt ~

That honor goes to Ealdread, from The White Rose.

With a man so rugged, handsome, and hardy as he is, I dare say he'd look good in anything....and his native costume is quite similar to a kilt, actually!




~ Most Likely to Get Punched in the Face ~

That honor would belong to my little group of rogues from Hidden Seeds....Merrion would be the most guilty. He has this habit of getting in the way and sounding off that is rather tempting to fists. 




~ Most Likely to Drop Everything and Become a Sheep Herder ~

Maeve from From the Cave and Rose o'Neill from "Rose of Culmore" are a tie for this one. Both would love a more simplistic life away from the world's problems. Rose probably would have more experience with sheep, but Maeve would love to get into spinning....


~ Most Likely to Be Found in the Library ~

Leon, from The White Rose. Like his sister Janina, Leon is a quiet person who loves to study. In fact, I believe he has some inklings of joining one of the teaching sects of Leberechts. 




~ Most Likely to Sleep Through an Earthquake ~

John Callahan from "Rose of Culmore". This guy, especially when he's been working in the fields all day, is a bear to try to get up. He goes into deep hibernation and only food will get him to move.




~ Most Likely to Steal Food from Other Peoples’ Plates ~

Karsten, from The White Rose, if he could get away with it. Will Chagney from "Shattered Chandelier" would be a close second though. Both have a mischievous side to them, but Karsten's is much more developed.



~ Most Likely to Cheat on a Test ~

Ceinwen from Hidden Seeds would be the most likely candidate for this one, even though Magda from The White Rose wouldn't be too far behind her. I mean, Ceinwen did kidnap her sister and deceived her sister's suitor into marrying her....so I suppose test-cheating isn't that much of a stretch for her.




~ Most Likely to Say “Oops” After Setting Something on Fire ~

Bradach from From the Cave. He'd do something stupid like that and then since he's so brash, he'd just shrug it off. Meanwhile, his older brother is threatening to curse him out and his younger sister is already inquiring on how to make restitution for the damages.....




~ Most Likely to Open an Orphanage ~

If Lilliwen from Hidden Seeds and Janina from The White Rose would ever meet each other, I dare say, they would indeed open up an orphanage together. Janina loves orphans and has care of the court orphans as part of her lot as the youngest child (which is titled Champion of the Orphan). Lilliwen is such a motherly soul, she would take every foundling child she ever saw to her bosom. 




~ Most Likely to Run off with the Circus ~

Kestrel from "Shattered Chandelier". After all, it was her idea for her and Jessamine to run off to a theater, so a circus wouldn't be that much of a stretch for her. She's a natural performer and has a bold streak in her that can get her into trouble some days. 



~ Most Likely to Survive the Zombie Apocalypse ~

Conloach from From the Cave. If he was in today's world, he'd be a survival freak. Like prepper survival freak - I'm talking the weapons arsenal, the doomsday bunker, the works. He'd call it "preparation" but I know him too well. Seriously dude, the fear of famine is rather unfounded in this day and age....




~ Most Likely to Fake Their Own Death ~

Oh brother....this question really got me stumped. Because none of my characters really have no reason to fake their own deaths...

I guess the closest one would be Gail from From the Cave. And that's only because she's at the end of her ingenuity and needs a way to get out the situation she's in. 



~ Most Likely to Die and Haunt Their Friends ~

Umm, I'd say that both Eric Gerard and Will Chagney from "Shattered Chandelier" would be willing to pull this stunt....each for different reasons.



I tag:

Belle Anne @ Worlds of Ink and Paper
The Doorman @ The Lord, His Lady and Their Doorman
Megan Chappie @ The Pen and the Cross
Sarah @ Sarah, Plain and Average
Keturah Lamb @ Keturah's Korner



And now, for the last tag of the day!



It takes one to know one, and this tag definitely proved it. I got passed this tag by MiddleEarthMusician, who is also a big Tolkien fan. Which I thank you very much for!

Rules:

1. Include the tag banner in your post.
2. Link back to the creator of the tag. (http://litaflame.blog/)
3. Thank and link back to the person who tagged you (You can view her post HERE).
4. Forge your Fellowship out of BOOK CHARACTERS by answering the given questions!
5. Tag three bloggers to pass the Ring to.


#1 [The Ringbearer]: If you could choose, which of the four races would you be: Elf, Dwarf, Human, or Hobbit?

I'm not sure how this has to do with book characters??

That being said, I'd probably be an Elf. They're the most interesting to me :).


#2 [Gandalf the Grey]: A wise/powerful elder/mentor character.

Brom from Eragon: The Inheritance Cycle #1. He's one of my top favorite mentor characters of all time, and definitely reminds me of Gandalf.


#3 [Aragorn]: A character with great survival skills.

Halt from The Ranger's Apprentice series. If there is one guy that has the spirit of Aragon, it's this guy. Seriously.


#4 [Boromir]: A character who makes mistakes but has a good heart.

Marguerite St. Just Blakeney from The Scarlet Pimpernel is probably the best character for this. She did betray someone rather dear to her unwittingly, and then made huge sacrifices in order to correct her mistake.


#5 [Gimli]: A stubborn character.

Margaret Hale from North and South. Seriously, that girl is so stubborn, she puts Thornton to shame sometimes....but she's also rather courageous, so we'll go with that.


#6 [Legolas]: A character who is talented.

Gabi from Waterfall (River of Time #1) by Lisa Tawn Bergren. This girl not only knows her history, but she know's 14th century Italian, how to ride and sword-fight?? Wow....


#7 [Peregrin Took]: A character who at first seems useless but ends up surprising you.

Frank the Cab Man from The Magician's Nephew. When I re-read this book again recently, I questioned the need for the London cabbie to be sucked into Narnia. Even more so when Aslan brought his wife Helen into Narnia. But then when they became the first monarchs of Narnia, it became clear why they were there.


#8 [Meriadoc Brandybuck]: A character who is small/not very strong but has great courage.

Sister Bertrille from The Flying Nun series. Technically, she started out as a TV character, but there are spin-off books, so I'm using that.

Sister, according to the book, only weighs 90 lbs and is extremely thin...hence the ability of the wind to pick her up and allow her to fly. Don't ask.
But despite her size, she successfully faced down angry playboys and maybe a disgruntled gangster or two....

#9 [Samwise Gamgee]: A character who is extremely loyal and who doesn’t give up

William Hartwell from The Captivating Lady Charlotte by Carolyn Miller. Any enterprising aristocrat that remains faithful to an unfaithful wife is worthy of the title of loyal.


Well, there is a motley crew for you! Pity we can't see this Fellowship in reality, there would be a lot of interesting conversations coming out of there.

As for this tag, I'm leaving this one open for anyone who wants it :)


And that concludes this triple tag! Who else wishes their characters could cross worlds? What reasons would a character have to fake their own death? What is your favorite type of character? Drop a comment below! 

Scribbingly yours,

Catherine

Hello all!

It is I, your friendly neighborhood writer blogger, who seems to be on a terrible chatting streak as of late. I'm not sure what fairy blessed me or what dark fairy disappeared, but be forewarned that there is another longish post.

Where was I in this again? Oh yes, I was going to explain why I even attempted to make a map in the first place. And then I got sidetracked by a huge tangent in which the ins and outs of a rather obscure map-making site got a too thorough of an explanation.

Now as I was attempting to explain before my detail-happy muse took over....I never really thought book maps to be, well, useful. I never really studied the maps in either Tolkien's Lord of the Rings or Christopher Paolini's Eragon. I relied on the prose to tell me where the characters were. Which explains why I often had to reread several paragraphs.

It wasn't until I was creating Verden's world then I realized that, well, I had to establish some sort of physical guide. Distances had to be figured, weather seasons had to be determined and my characters were suddenly referring to landmarks that I had no idea where they were. Hence for author sanity, a map was needed.

Before I set about making this map, I checked my notes....and found these mapping guidelines:

• Two landmasses were separated in the middle by a sea, known as The Sea of Saoirse-Tesni. What a mouthful...someone may need to fix that one. 
• Duventoliel had a temperate climate, but was near Verden's equator. It's a lot warmer than many of the countries. 
• Duventoliel was on the northern end of one of the landmasses. Think like South America. 
• Aistaraina and Duventoliel bordered each other
• Aistaraina and Ceberlandon bordered each other. 
• Gwydion was nearby both Aistaraina and Ceberlandon
• Maisaka was the closest country to Duventoliel from across the sea 
• And who knew where Jaqaru, Shaltei and Ravndal were located. Though there are cultural hints that Ravndal was near Duventoliel. 

Greetings to you from the cave!

In spite of the fact that my garden is being overtaken by weeds and piles of clutter are threatening to trap me at every turn, I've managed to log at least 42 hours towards my goal of 60 for Camp NaNo. If that doesn't tell you my order of priorities, I'm not sure what will.

Lately, I've been embroiled in a major aesthetics project for The White Rose. One that is keeping me up wayyy too late in the night. I even broke my 2 am rule for this thing.

So what was it that kept my interest for well over 10 hours now?

Well, it is....of all things....a map.

For most of my writing, I never really bothered with creating maps. Most of my stories were either historical fiction or contemporary - which were set in real places. This is true of stories like Hidden Seeds (Dark Age Wales), Rose of Culmore (19th Century Ireland), and Plain and Simple Truth (21st Century Lancaster, PA).

That got changed when I started dabbling into fantasy.

I first ran across the idea of creating a map when I was writing the first Meet the Books! linkup (which you can view HERE), hosted by my dear friend Belle Anne @ World of Ink and Paper. A few other participants would put their hand-drawn maps as answers for that question, and I thought that was a neat idea....one that I really wanted to try out. 

Except for one rather small thing....

I can't draw well.

It's not that I don't know how to draw. I have consulted a few drawing books, and I took a drawing elective in high school. I do like to draw occasionally, particularly animals and flowers.

My biggest issue is scale. Computer sizing and scaling has spoiled me exceedingly. I can't draw much to scale to save my little skin. I will be the first to admit that half of my drawings for my high school class were basically tracings of photographs. And well, I can't trace something that doesn't exist, really. With my luck, I would have drawn one landmass as a ginormous thing, and the other would have a corner....when both are supposed to be equal. 

So, drawing the map myself was out of the question. Hiring someone to draw it for me, even for food, wasn't a really good option for me either. Being broke really does have it's downsides, peeps.

Hence, to find an online map creator I went.

I made two major attempts, the most recent happening this week. I tried sites like Autorealm, Inkarnate, and other fantasy map creators. Most were aimed at gamers rather than authors, so I wasn't thrilled with the quality of the product (not realistic enough) or ease of use (wayyyy too many numbers and not enough dials working). Nor was I comfortable with creating an account for a website that I was only going to use a few times. And others such as Cartographer's Guild required payment and there was no way I was shelling out Scrivener prices for something that I wasn't going to use often.

I had GIMP on my computer already, and I tried researching tutorials on how to create maps on there. But again, the language was wayyyy above my head. I may be conversant in standard computer language, but throw in the graphic dialect and I'm sunk.

It was at this point that I found Roll for Fantasy's map creator, which you can find HERE. 

When I first researched it, the map creator seemed to be too complicated for my liking. I wasn't wild about how the site was laid out and the buttons didn't seem to work at first. The fact that it's a grid system didn't help matters.

But finding no better alternative after two separate searches, I decided to try to play with it. After all, it was free, required no account, and didn't have all the RPG jargon that made me nervous (some RPG games, including DnD, have some really dubious moral stuff about them that just....doesn't sit very well on my conscience)  

After actually reading the instructions on how to use the dumb thing (who knew those were important?) I set to work playing around with shapes.

I will warn you all now - whoever picks this cartographer site better really likes jigsaw puzzles. Because that's what it it's set up as.

All the individual pieces don't always match up with each other 100%. So it is possible to have a coastline end abruptly in a sort of funny shaped peninsula if the corner edge you picked doesn't match up on both ends. Hence, there is a lot of trial and error.

See what I mean? Created using Roll for Fantasy Map Creator

Oh yes, and there is the olive green water. Gross, ain't it?

The great thing about this map creator that a realistic map can be achieved. I was able to create a really awesome looking world map, which included river deltas, archipelagos (island chains) and other cool stuff. The image can then be taken to another editor like GIMP, where it can be re-colorized and edited to look even more realistic. I'm not 100% sure, but I think the pieces were created using real coastline shapes...I'm sure I recognized several edges from England, France and other countries.

The drain is that it is INCREDIBLY time consuming. And the canvas is kinda limited on size and scale. I also have not been able to figure out the save and reload functions either, so I've been screenshot-saving all of my work and then having to reconstruct it - an extremely tedious task that I will touch on later on.

I've found it's best if one continent was drafted at a time, and then saving blank grids so that the world can be reconstructed in GIMP. And, if at all possible, set aside enough time to get it completely finished at once.

*pauses to catch breath*

*looks up*

Welp. I did it again. I guess this is another two parter! (though I'm sure you figured it out by now, seeing as how I have rather revealing titles *shifts eyes*) 

In the second part (and it will only be a second part, I promise!) I'll go through the actual map creation process and show you, finally, what my world of Verden looks like.

Scribbingly yours,

Catherine