Hi! Okay, first things first: I'm fine, don't worry. This is hopefully a good post. So our beloved Jess posted a blog recently about how we only show the positive side of ourselves on social media, so people don't see the real us. It chimed with me. I think this attitude is as harmful to… Continue reading Recalibration
Blog
Dark Coffee
He strode past the shopfronts with his hood up and his hands in his pockets. Rain pounded down, dripping off the tips of the sloped roofs, sparkling like diamonds in the headlights of the cars that rushed past. The rain nearer to him had a rainbow sheen. Was that reflective of the many-coloured neon signs… Continue reading Dark Coffee
The World Doesn’t Always Move Forward
In 1964, a king brought together a committee of experts. Their task, he told them, was to draft a constitution worthy of a modern country. Though democracy was a relatively foreign concept to this country, they planned to inch towards it. The experts, most of them educated in foreign lands, set about their work. The… Continue reading The World Doesn’t Always Move Forward
Review: The Garden of the Golden Children
Garden is a haunting book. It deals with some heavy topics, specifically child abuse - and I'll be talking about that part of the book. Just a heads up. (Side note: I appreciate that the publisher put a specific warning about this in the front matter. We should see this more often.) Between the experimental… Continue reading Review: The Garden of the Golden Children
My Q and A
Do you have a favourite compass rose? Use the same in all your maps? Or design them different for each style/type of map you're creating? Some are definitely prettier than others, but no, generally I make a new one for every map I draw! If money and location were no object, what would be your… Continue reading My Q and A
A Year As A Freelance Mapmaker
I've talked about this before, but I want to briefly go over how I ended up as an illustrator. After falling out of uni with an English/History degree and no plan whatsoever, I ended up freelance writing for basically peanuts. That dried up, I had a months-long crisis of drafting a novel and no income… Continue reading A Year As A Freelance Mapmaker
Why Did The Queen Speak To Parliament?
A new parliament started yesterday, so I thought I'd talk about parliamentary beginnings, endings, and the history of how this complicated system came about. Yesterday was the Queen's Speech, which takes place every year in the spring. It's usually a day of great pageantry and ceremony, though because of the coronavirus, today's speech is going… Continue reading Why Did The Queen Speak To Parliament?
How Medieval Guilds Worked
Guilds are a staple feature of fantasy fiction, especially video games. Players enjoy rising through the ranks by doing missions for the guild, eventually becoming guildmaster. But how did they work in real life? St George's Guildhall, King's Lynn, built around 1428. Funnily enough, fantasy gets some stuff right here. They usually use the terms… Continue reading How Medieval Guilds Worked
Inspiration: How Medieval Towns Worked
A lot of fantasy writers draw inspiration from medieval Europe - or what they think is medieval Europe. This means kings with absolute authority, dirty peasants, shifty merchants, grubby towns and - besides a handful of inept town guards who seem to work directly for the king or local lord - a total lack of… Continue reading Inspiration: How Medieval Towns Worked
Drawing a City on a Fantasy Map
I've talked for ages about doing some map tutorials, and today I had to draw up a fairly elaborate city for one of my maps. I figured I'd break it down step by step so you get a better idea of how I do it. This isn't the only way to draw map cities, but… Continue reading Drawing a City on a Fantasy Map
