Tatto For You

Still here, still battling on: if there was an award for World's Suckiest At Self-Discipline (and blogging), I would surely be a contender. Where I am at creatively, atm? What does a soul do with creativity and inspiration? With the flow and the necessary ebb of productive humours? Do you put them in a box, a routine that allows them daily expression? Do you wait until they burst in fiery generating glory then suffer the long slow down-swing before the next up-swing? Is it something in-between? Is this in-between even possible? As an author of three books, should I have not already figured this out? While you chew on that cud, please be entertained by a glimpse of a current WIP: a map of Brandenbrass. Brandenbrass: Work-in-progress. Brandenbrass: a detail. Of course, is doing a map of Brandenbrass useful? Perhaps leaving it uncharted and open to interpretation would serve better?* I do love a good map tho, and figuring out how in Photoshop I can achieve an antiquated look...

Well, how are the dice making projects coming along? Better than my blogging frequency, I hope :) Once again it is well overdue for me to post. Exciting news (I hope) is that I am working on two books at the moment: one an edit/rewrite of The Corsers' Hinge to (again, I hope) be released as a stand alone novella, complete with maps, illustrations, a brief explicarium and other appendical (not a real word) matter. Do people want to see this? If it happens it is more likely to come out first. The second is a proper novel that the more I work on it, the more I feel might stretch out into the usual fat, multi-volume "epic" (for want of a better word) I found myself stumbling into with MBT. It will not (as I might have said before... or was that just in a dream...?) be about Rossamünd and Europe this time around, but I hope you are going to really like the new fellow in the spot light (as it were) - he really takes up where dear little Rosey left off. This is all what ...

In an as usually belated response to a continuing question about the inhabitants of the Half-Continent and beyond I have put this map up again but now with all new NUMBERS! [TM] by which I intend to answer said query. So here ' tis : 1/ Southeastern tip of Nenin , in the continent known as the Occident = Oriental derived cultures; 2/ Western coast of Heil , called Tung and home to a peoples derived from Mongol/ central asian cultures; 3/ Heilgoland proper, an empire based somewhat on Russian/ central European cultures; 4/ I cannot remember what this area is called specifically but it is home to a wide group of wild folk; 5/ The somewhat mythic lands of Fiele , little is known of here but that perhaps its is a land of sedorners and many monsters; 6/ The (Greater) Derelands , original home of the Skylds (for those who recall the history of Ingebiarge ), origin of greater derehunds (most excellent tykehouds ) and home of the Hagenards and various other peoples based on Nor...

Here is a (very!) rough prototype scribble of the possible formation of landmasses about the Half-Continent, a fair part of the southern lands of the Harthe Alle (snazzed up a bit with fancy computer trickery). This is still an ongoing exploration for me, which keeps things fun. The pallid areas are landmasses, the orange to glaucous the oceans (the colour shift representing climactic/temperature change = north hotter as you approach the 'equator', cooler the further south you wend). The solid red mass is the Half-Continent as revealed to you in the Monster-Blood Tattoo books and on the map site . The names in parenthesis are largely old even forgotten appellations for the regions at the time of the Phlegms. Given the size of the Half-Continent already, I think this would make the whole 'planet' rather large indeed. I believe that though our earth is the optimal calibration for life, a much larger globe is theoretically possible, and even if it weren't, it is now. ...