A new map

So the background world of writing trickles on and, as I wait for publishers and agents to get back to me on other stories, I continue to work on The Rogue King Saga (I still get chills whenever I read that). All goes well there, I’m pretty much certain the final word counts for the first two novels are nearing stability and the third merely waits for me to finish the last new chapter before adding the final chapters to the fourth novel.
After all the time I’ve spent with these characters, my writing is lightning fast. At least, when I can write as it’s the school holidays for my little possum (only a few more days now).

But that’s got nothing to do with maps.

I go to my shelves and pick up any fantasy book, 50-75% of them have a map of the world. When my goal was to have The Rogue King traditionally published, I’d always intended on a map hitching a ride along with the rest of it to be redone by someone more skilled than I. Obviously, this route is no longer one I can rely on.
I’ve been in possession of a map for years … sort of, I know my drawing skills are not that fine. And though my old attempt is better than the original (which, according to family, looked like a defecating fish), but still … the new and improved was not a thing of beauty and I’d be ashamed to put it in a book.

So I scouted out what choices I had and, all up, there were three options:

1. Pay someone else to create my map.
2. Find some way to do it myself.
3. No map.

I’m not gone on #3, if I am to be honest. People do publish fantasies without maps (top of my head, I can name two series that do this). Given the choice, I would very much like a map. Which left me with the expensive and insanely tediously back-and-forth option of #1 or tricky #2.
So back to #2 we go.
I do recall T.B. McKenzie of Magickless mentioning a Photoshop Tutorial he used for his map. At the time, I didn’t possess a version of Photoshop. I recently tried Gimp, but, alas, that didn’t work either. Then I found a seven-year-old version on the Adobe website and thought, why not?

Yesterday, after many hours, practically my whole day, I came away with this:

So pretty …

Granted, this is just one side of the world, but when I speak of only the The Rogue King Saga (there goes that chill again), the other continent is a mere mention.

Having stumbled across a different map-making tutorial, which I used for the water (and following that darn near took as long to follow as the entire previous tutorial), it now doesn’t look all that bad in greyscale …

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In other news, Katie is holding a bloghop celebrating her release of Kiya: Hope of the Pharaoh. Pop on over and check it out, some great prizes to be had. Or, if you don’t want to leave getting the book up to chance, you can always buy her book from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or Kobo. Either way, you’re not getting my copy.