As you’ve probably noticed, I’ve been using my period of forced vacation to engage in an extended world-building exercise. Using a series of maps, I’m building the large-scale back history of The Great Lands, the setting for The Curse of Steel (and what may be a series of novels after that).

This has been a remarkably useful exercise. I went in with only a general plan for how I wanted the process to go. A lot of the details have been filled in with improvisation, guided by plentiful references to real-world history. As a result, I’ve been surprised by some of the details as they’ve emerged, and the back-story I’m developing feels coherent and organic. There may be many more stories to be found in this framework once it’s done.

At the moment, I’m planning to produce a total of 15 maps, with attached background text, a little over half of which is already finished in rough draft. That should give me plenty of material to work with moving forward.

Once that’s done, I have a couple of days’ worth of more focused work to do, redrawing a local map and reworking a timeline, before I can start writing the second draft of The Curse of Steel. I expect to have all of this under way by mid- to late May.

One consequence of all this is that, finally, I think I’m prepared to start my Patreon campaign going once more.

In May, I plan to release a PDF titled The History of the Great Lands, including cleaned-up versions of all of the maps, a timeline, and a pile of additional text. That will serve as a first teaser for the Great Lands RPG sourcebook I’m putting together. In June, I should be able to release a PDF of the first few chapters of the second draft of The Curse of Steel.

Shameless plug: both of those items will only be available to my patrons, so if you’re interested in them, have a look at my Patreon page and see if you’d like to sign up.

While you’re here, have a look at the sidebar for this blog. I’ve dropped the Chapterbuzz link, added links to my Patreon and DeviantArt pages, and switched the Progress Bar widget over to indicate progress on the historical-atlas series.

Now, back to the maps . . .