Episode 18: Building A World

Maps, maps and more maps! 🌏🧭

Welcome to the Pub Dates newsletter! We’re so glad you’re here.

This newsletter is released as a companion to each podcast episode, and we use it to share the visual elements of our discussion — from mood boards to design sketches, from photos to secret giveaways just for subscribers.

In episode eighteen, we talked about MAPS! We’re both huge map nerds, and we took you through how we created the geography for The Isles of the Gods and Nightbirds, and how we worked with our incredibly talented artists to bring those maps to life. Or really, just watched in admiration as they did!

First up, we want to remind you that you can send us a challenge for our December holiday episode — name a page you’d like a quote from, ask us to choose which of our characters we’d like to kiss, marry or throw off a cliff… take your pick. There’s only a couple of days left to leave a question and enter to win the prize!

You can do that by leaving a comment here, emailing us at pubdates at gmail dot com, or you can leave us a voice message by clicking here.

Don’t forget — there are advance copies of both The Isles of the Gods and Nightbirds up for grabs. Everyone who asks a question will go into the draw!

Now, onward! We promised you lots of gorgeous pictures, so let’s get straight to it.

First up, here’s Amie’s original sketch, which she created in Inkarnate. See how the Isles are right in the middle, where they’d fall in the gutter? Whoops.

And next up, we’ve got the final map by Virginia Allyn in all its glory…

Now, onward to Kate’s original sketches of both city and continent…

And the stunning final result from Sveta Dorosheva…

We’ve got some gorgeous pics that show Sveta working…

And we’ve also got this incredible video! Click on the still image to watch Sveta at work — it’s quite something!

And finally, we’ve got Amie’s very dodgy hand-drawn effort at the map that would eventually go into her book Ice Wolves…

And the final, glorious result… Bit different, isn’t it?

And that’s it for this episode! Thank you for listening, friends — and don’t forget to leave us a question to go into the draw for the advance copies! You can do that by leaving a comment here, emailing us at pubdates at gmail dot com, or you can leave us a voice message by clicking here.