Hello!

Well the start of 2021 has been…interesting? I’m not sure that’s really the right word, but it’s the one I’m going with because it’s less complicated than some of the others. However, between lockdowns and everything else, our house currently being in disarray because the kitchen is being done (cooking in the living room is strange and I don’t like it, although the dog is loving in as it brings her closer to the food), and sheet ice making it very hard to get out and about for walks it has been incredibly hard to focus on writing. Instead, I’ve been reading – a lot – and I now I have a bunch of reviews to write, I’ve been doing some world-building for a new DnD campaign that I will be starting up at the end of this month, and I’ve managed to poke at my editing off and on.

I’m not quite at the point I hoped to be with my editing, but progress is being made. I managed to untangle a fight scene where I almost killed one of my main characters without intending too (I am terrible to my characters, but he isn’t supposed to die… ). I’m attempting to set up a schedule for the coming weeks (I miss work, and the structure it gives me), so hopefully I will be able to catch up, but considering *gestures at the world* I consider any and all progress to be good at the moment.

However, one bit of progress has been that I’ve been experimenting with some new cartography software and while I am still working out the nuts and bolts (and I’m looking at some other ones), I’m loving it so far, and it is making my inner geographer incredibly happy. It’s also allowed me to take the hand-drawn maps I had floating around, and make them into something that I’m a lot happier with.

I’m still trying to work out canvas sizes so I can do a complete world map, so I’ve been breaking it down into regions. At the moment, I am focusing on the three main countries that feature in The Citadel stories – Lawali, Crescent Isles and Kalinsar (that map is very much still in development, which is why it isn’t included here), and these are the current wips as I am still tweaking and I want to add borders etc before I can consider them anywhere close to complete.

Bonus Map and Dungeons & Dragons:

This was the first map that I experimented with, and is the starting area for the DnD campaign I am running from the end of the month. Zerua is a world of floating islands, airships and mist, and I am looking forward to diving into the campaign with my new group. This campaign is also going to mean that every other week or so I will be playing DnD three times a week, having just joined another group, while playing across several campaigns with my original group (another reason to get a schedule up and running before I have to factor in going back to work).

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Rowena