The map of the dragon-realms, here at last in all its glory!

Map of the Realms.

All its sideways glory.

<sigh>

Doubtless some way to remedy this will be found shortly and certainly by the time the rest of the gazetteer is ready. News on that is it’s going through proof-reading. Don’t know when it’ll be finished but it should easily be online by the end of the year. Those following my posts via RSS be warned, there are 161 entries to the gazetteer and they’re all going up as blog posts so that people can comment on them and laugh publicly at the typos and the names they don’t like. I’ll issue another warning when I’m about to do it  and then I’ll turn the RSS feed off. Probably.

Oh and yes, I know the cross-posting to Livejournal has stopped working and no, I don’t know why.

The rewrite for King of the Crags is finally finished. (This is author-speak, which is, I’ve discovered, much like scientist-speak or engineer-speak for finished in that what it actually means, is that the bulk of the hard work is done and now I’m going to fiddle around the edges for several years).

OK. Almost finished. It will be finished before Fantasycon. Promise. Finished and deliverated. Well, finished and deliverated except for all the changes that will happen during the copy-edit, that is.

OK, OK, not finished then. On schedule. Will that do?

No it won’t, because April next year still feels like half a lifetime away. There’s the now definitely officially deleted prologue, but that’s old news. New news is that there is a most excellent draft map from the most excellent Dave Senior (no link – sorry) which just goes to show what a real professional can do when compared with my own somewhat less excellent draft map posted previously. Also, I’ve been sitting on the incredibly gorgeous draft cover for King of the Crags for ages now with dragon-art by the master of dragon art Dominic Harman. Unveiled exclusively here in advance of Fantasycon!

See what I did here? Lots of stuff by other people… No actual new material.

There will be, though, and a lot sooner than April. There’s a Sollos-and-Kemir short story waiting patiently to be written. There’s the gazetteer, nearly done, probably ready as a first draft by the end of the month, and believe me, that sucker’s going straight up here, warts and all and anyone who helps to proof-read it will get a part in the movie big thank-you. Promise.

In the meantime though, I have to go bury myself in The Thief-Taker’s Apprentice again.

OK, OK. Here’s a map dammit. When some bloke clocks you round the back of the head and says ‘nice book but where’s the map,’ when the issue of maps converges with actual physical abuse, it’s time to act. So here it is. A draft map of the dragon-realms. Now enough with the hitting me.

Actually, this is only the tip of the iceberg to keep those of you who need a map RIGHT NOW from further acts of violence. In the background, there’s a slightly nicer version of this map that I’m not going to publish just yet that’s being turned into a much nicer map courtesy of those nice folks at Gollancz who are going to pay for someone who can, y’know, actually draw and stuff.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Over the next few months, the <cue dramatic music. No, more dramatic than that. Bit more… bit more… Here we go…> Dahn dan daaaaaa…. Gazeteer Project will be going online. Over the rest of the year, an online gazetteer of the dragon-realms will be going up, with some two hundred entries. Off-line work is about half complete now and the whole project will be up by the end of the year. I’ll be putting it up in pieces, starting with the Adamatine Palace and its environs later this month. Want to know how the realms ended up the way they are? Want to know the secrets of the dragons? Read the damn books then! Ha! Because the gazetteer won’t tell you any of that. But if you want to know why, say, how the Silver City got its name, well then the gazetteer is for you (what do you mean, what Silver City? You mean you haven’t read book three yet…? Oh, that’s right, you haven’t. Ha Ha.)

Since all of this gazetteer work has happened since King of the Crags was submitted for edit, I think we can all expect the wordcount to go up a bit there too. Ho hum.

Oh, and what that means is if you’re taking an RSS feed off here is that you’re going to get shedloads of posts…

Finally a word on copyright. I mean for the gazetteer to be available under a creative commons license, which means you can use it for anything you feel like provided you a) give credit, b) it’s not for commercial purposes and c) if you modify it, you have to allow others to use what you make under the same conditions. Role-players, I’m talking to you…

(The same applies to the map here. Whether it can apply to the much nicer map from Gollancz is another matter).

Gazetteer of the dragon-realms by Stephen Deas is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.
Based on a work at www.stephendeas.com.

And finally… I saw the first draft cover of King of the Crags to day and it is most excellent and I can’t wait to share it!