I love looking at maps. Real maps, for when I’m going overseas. I like doing little imaginary walks through the streets of my destination, checking out the hotel, the surrounding area, the local restaurants, the best route to the major landmarks.

And I’ll read pretty much any book that opens with a map, because I feel like whenever you see a map you know you’re about to be taken on an epic journey. You’re going places. Your rucksack is packed, the horses are ready, and the road goes ever on and on.

So it was inevitable that Price of Magic was going to have a map, if only so I can keep the locations and distances straight in my own mind. There’s no point having your heroes tramping due east for three days when due east leads straight into the ocean. This kills the suspension of disbelief.

My local area map – the locations visited in Book 1 – has been on the site for a while. But now I’ve added the world map, and I won’t lie, it’s pretty neat. Fully zoomable, pannable, and clickable. Plus added sidebar for separating out the categories and keeping everything straight.

On the technical side, I use the Mapplic plugin to code the clickable stuff, plus Photoshop for the background image.

While I’m here, I might share a little about how my map came about. Sadly, I don’t have the very earliest versions anymore — they’re lost somewhere in the bowels of my old harddrive — but I do have a map that’s a couple of years old:

As you can see, besides the colour and overall look, it’s similar. My earliest map actually had the continent going west-to-east rather than north-to-south, until I realised that a) north-to-south makes for more interesting climate variation, and b) a vertical layout is easier to display on a standard book page. I’m guessing George R R Martin had the same thoughts when he decided on the shape of Westeros.

Some of the major changes from this early version include:

• Moving Crater Deep from the far north to the south. I realised it didn’t make a lot of sense to have a parched desert on the same latitude as the snowy highlands. The shape stayed more or less the same, though. The idea of a country based inside some enormous crater… well, I still dig it. Would an impact that big have destroyed the planet? Probably. Oh well. Rule of Cool.
• Jhabahabi migrated south and got its own peninsula. Makes more sense from a climate perspective — it’s not meant to be a freezing cold place — and also helps to explain how they’ve managed to stay so isolated. Ain’t nobody tramping through there on their way to other places.
• The country of Vilveris got wiped. Sorry, guys. They weren’t doing much besides harbouring some illegal wizards. On the plus side, Padmaphur has now sprung into existence to take its place.
• Shatse is skinny now. Having so much land made it hard to explain why they aren’t a major power.
• The Slumbering Isles are much smaller and no longer free. Now they’re part of the game of political kickball between the Heartlands and Midlands.
• A few name changes. Once I started really hashing out details, I had to pick common naming themes for different areas. Skirvir and Skyrock didn’t really say anything about the place, whereas Asgerad and Jornholm clearly signal the nordic cultural influence. Of course, since this is fantasy, I also throw in a bit of Russia, a bit of the Pictish tribes, and a bit of Tolkienien dwarf culture.
• Sad old Durain, a bit of a nothing place, is now Nederlund. The naming conventions are a bit of Dutch, a bit of Danish, and the actual vibe of the country is meant to evoke Puritan America à la Sleepy Hollow. Lots of windmills, pumpkins, autumn colours and witch-burnings. Plus a dash of Nepal and Bhutan, just because.
• I found out Rockport is a shoe. Whoops. Scratch that town.
• Moved some cities and towns around so they make more sense based on natural features. Settlements are now sensibly located near rivers or along major trade routes.

And the final result — well, I say final, but of course everything is subject to change, and will change if history is any indication — is my new map, which looks something like this:

And there you have it. Feel free to go take a closer look on my Caerwyn page. Play around with the features. Let me know if you find any crazy bugs.

Until then, it’s back to the writing desk for me. Ciao for now.