Today I offer a story of maps and novels. My new book, OF KINGS, QUEENS AND COLONIES is upon us and I thought it might be interesting to share with everyone the strange path of the map in it. Yes, I wrote a book that benefited from having a map. Robert Louis Stevenson would be proud.
I needed a map, and about every other tool I possessed, to keep track of the complicated and intricate workings of this complicated and intricate epic science fiction story. Geographic consistency, thy name is maps.
Let me introduce you to the first map. The most important one. This one I built using Scapple, a great little program from Literature and Latte, the folks that brought us Scrivener, for all you non-writer types. Highly recommended resource for creatives everywhere.
This is the overview of the Coronam solar system. I went on to make close-up maps of all the planets, which included associated characters, traits, and other details, I needed to keep in mind when visiting those places, but this one was central. The most important thing it did was arrange the planets in their strange orbits. All the worlds around the volitive star called Coronam, share a single orbital path in the Goldilocks zone. This is strange and mysterious feature, a central conceit, and a mystery at the heart of the miracle that gave humanity its second chance.
