Whenever I pick up a fantasy novel, the map is always the first thing I look for. A well drawn map makes all the difference when you’re trying to bring an imaginary world to life. The people and places become more real when you can follow the heroes’ route through their world or when you can see where all the points of interest are.

I'm a firm believer that the map just as useful to the creator of the world as it is to the people reading about it, so when I began writing this story, I started with the map. (More than likely because I have an awful sense of direction and can barely navigate my own neighborhood let alone an entire world.

This particular world, though, has gone through a lot of changes since it's original inception.

The earliest version of this world was a hand drawn map on a sheet of notebook paper. A number of key details were there even in the earliest phase. Sadly, most of the earliest drafts have been lost. I know I have the notebook somewhere, but a good chunk of digital assets were lost to a pretty devastating hard drive crash 11 years ago that cost me just about everything (minus all the info I had committed to memory, anyway).

This printed map is one of only a handful of art assets I still have (but the associated Illustrator file is gone forever):

If you look close enough, you'll probably notice that the compass is backwards, so, honestly, it's probably for the best that this thing is dust. Out of those, ashes, I took yet another stab at drawing up the world using a combination of Illustrator and Photoshop.

I was able to put together some really cool looking assets that were pretty close to the stuff I lost:

In working on this version of the map, I learned some Photoshop tricks to paint some interesting mountains, and was (mostly) happy with the outcome—especially for the Stonespyre Mountains around Thoranee.

The major problem with this pass, though, is that it is absolutely gargantuan.

The process of painting this map was kind of, uh, brutal. The “fully painted” image earlier in the post took a couple days to get right, and that was just a tiny little segment of this larger image. (Have I mentioned that I like to bite off more than I can chew?)

That massive blotch of green on the right half of the map is simply called “the Wilds" primarily because that was the easiest way to stop myself from trying to fill it all in. It's uncharted. It exists, and some explorers know about it, but no one's mapped it yet. (How's that for an in-canon “placeholder text?”)

When I picked up this project again at the start of the year, the first thing I did was wrote that sample I posted a couple weeks ago. But the very next thing I did was draw up a new world map. Specifically, a smaller world map. One focused specifically on the Northlands (which is the region where this first novel is set).

These other areas are still out there, and I'll get to them eventually, but I'm trying really hard to avoid my usual pitfalls and focus instead on something manageable. To that end, I decided to not only redraw the world, but also to reduce the scale of it. The Northlands used to be comparable in size to the continental US, and while that isn't necessarily a bad thing, that is a lot of land for one person to fill with history. Thoranee’s history can be just as exciting with 4 or 5 cities as it was with 15, and I'll have an easier time keeping track of them.

Which brings us to the following image. This is the new (much improved, and significantly reduced) map of the Northlands:

Minus cities/roads, anyway. If I showed you those, you'd get some pretty big spoilers. If you want to know more, you'll have to subscribe to this substack (or, I suppose, wait for the book to be finished).

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When I started this section of the substack, I had some lofty goals. My plan was to tell the story of Aluron from beginning to end, one small chapter at a time. That was one of those “more than I can chew" bits I mentioned in my last post.

I have a lot of lore tucked away in my head, and I thought I'd take a stab at just sort of laying it all out chronologically “on paper." (I tried creating a wiki at one point, but figuring out how to organize the volume of content proved to ve overwhelming, and I never got very far)

Given the new push to finish a novel, and in keeping with my daily goals, I want to get back into that worldbuilding mindset, but I'm going to jump ahead a bit in the timeline and focus on stuff a little more relevant to the novel—starting with the primary setting for its opening chapters: The human kingdom of Thoranee.

Population

Thoranee is the largest kingdom in the Northlands, and its population is almost exclusively human. There are some dwarves in a couple cities—primarily those near the mountains and/or mines, and there are a handful of camps housing Brushwood elves, though they aren't permanent settlements, and, at least on paper, the Brushwood elves are considered citizens of Furling.

Thoranee’s people are (primarily) descended from the Lycenians of Eden who first settled in the Stonespyre Valley after their ancestral home was destroyed. At the start of the story, Thoranee is likely the strongest military power in the region in terms of raw strength. I say likely because statistically speaking, they have a number of advantages. They have more soldiers, more regimented training, and the majority of their kingdom resides within a natural fortress. However, their strength hasn't been tested in some time.

Geography

Thoranee is located in the northeastern corner of the Northlands in the heart of the Sonespyre Valley—sometimes called the Stonespyre Garrison. The mountains form a protective barrier around most of the kingdom's major settlements with only three significant points of entry—all of which have been walled off and heavily fortified to keep invaders out.

Thoranee is known for being an exceptionally fertile region boasting rapid growing seasons and routinely bountiful harvests. Coupled with verdant forests and a robust fishing trade (thanks to their control of Sapphire Lake), Thoranee’s citizens are generally well fed. The kingdom is no stranger to poverty, however—most of which is the result of actions taken by its recent kings.

Culture

At the start of the book, Thoranee is in the midst of some notable changes. They're coming off a string of rather awful kings. While you likely wouldn't notice within the capital city of Phalorn, there is still a lot of unrest elsewhere in the kingdom.

Galdon Alcaste is proving to be very different from his predecessors—especially his father—but wounds don't heal overnight, and he has a lot of work ahead of him still.

Thoranee places a lot of stock in its military power. They train extensively, and offer a government subsidized military education to the eldest child in each family. Historically, the Lycenian people were largely nonconfrontational, but that burned them one too many times. Thoranee has the largest standing army in the Northlands by a considerable margin.

Notable Factions

Thoranee is home to the Shadow Clans.—a loose confederation of bandits and street gangs whose sole mission is to dethrone the Alcaste family (according to public opinion, anyway).

The Shadow Clans have a long history with the crown. They originated as local militias rallied to defend the Stonespyre Valley from bandits when Thoranee’s army marched off to wage war on Roshane (long before Galdon came to power).

Trained by Brushwood elves, the Shadow Clans were so good at their job that the king eventually sent them to replace his army on the front lines of the war.

When that war ultimately ended, the Shadow Clans returned to Thoranee to learn that the king had claimed their lands and homes, and he'd divided them up amongst ranking officers in the Royal Guard as payment for their service. The Shadow Clans got nothing.

In the years that followed, the Clans were forced to resort to thievery in order to survive, and they ultimately evolved into the very thing they were created to combat.

By the time Galdon was crowned, the Shadow Clans were largely divided into two main factions with one group supporting Tucker Arise (pronounced uh-reese) and his quest to eliminate the Alcaste family, and the other group backing Benjamin Sardonis and his push to repair relations with the Alcaste family and restore the Shadow Clans to the war heroes they once were.

Points of Interest

There are a handful of notable landmarks/locations in and around Thoranee that play an important role in the story (and in the kingdom's history.

Stonespyre Citadel

The Stonespyre Mountains are definitely a point of interest on their own, but I won't rehash what's already been said in this post. I will, however, mention the Citadel. The citadel is a massive wall/fortress that spans the southwestern gap in the Stonespyre Mountains.

This is one of only three points of entry into the valley. While it's possible to cross the mountains in other locations with a little ambition (and some reliable climbing gear), the southern pass is one if the only openings large enough to fit an invading army through.

As it exists at the start of the book, this fortress is especially unique in that it isn't just a single wall with a gate. It's a bit of a death trap designed to box enemies in (almost literally). The Citadel has 4 fortified walls surrounding an open “courtyard”, which stands completely empty.

The side walls are set high in the mountains in order to make it difficult for normal siege weapons to reach them while providing defending soldiers an easy vantage point for eliminating invading forces. The fort is equipped with dwarven engineered catapults and ballistae designed specifically to operate within the confines of the inner courtyard of the fortress.

The courtyard itself is really more of an open field designed to be a “holding pen" for anyone who breaks through the outter wall. Once inside, an invading force would find themselves surrounded on three sides (and whatever remained of the fourth) facing an enemy their weapons typically can't reach.

Northwatch & The Arlysian Wall

Like the Stonespyre Citadel, Northwatch is a fortress built to guard an entry point into the Stonespyre Valley, though Northwatch is notably smaller. Northwatch exists primarily as a deterrent for smaller strike forces—assassins, spies, things like that. The mountain fortress provides a good vantage point for spotting incoming threats, and the wall does a decent job of keeping those threats out.

What makes these landmarks so interesting is that they're both very difficult to see unless you know what to look for. They've been expertly blended into the natural slopes / peaks of the mountains in the area rendering them almost invisible to the naked eye. Unless an invading army knew exactly where to look, it's likely they'd just see mountains with no way through. The hope is that attackers would end up looking for a way around the mountains—leaving Thoranee plenty of time to fortify their defenses, or even send an army of their own to intercept the attack.

The Cellars of Thoranee

The Cellars are a large network of underground passages and shelters constructed by the dwarves shortly after the kingdom of Thoranee was founded. They were built in secret with entrances hidden throughout the valley to be used in the event the kingdom was ever invaded.

The Cellars proved to be instrumental in repelling an invasion during the early stages of the human civil war, and following the end of that conflict, they eventually became the primary operating base of the Shadow Clans.

The Cellars connect every major settlement in the valley, and even a few locations outside the mountains as well with full blown cities erected in some places designed to mirror the structures on the surface.

In theory, these shelters are large enough to house the entire population of Thoranee—or at least, that was the intent of their original construction. In the years since, Thoranee’s population has grown, and it's likely at least a small percentage of citizens would need to have their names struck from the guest list.

At the beginning of the book, the Shadow Clans and the Royal Guard are at war with each other in an attempt to conquer the Cellars—a war that the Guard is winning thanks to help from Benjamin Sardonis (you'll hear more about him later)

This is just a quick crash course in a few key points about the kingdom of Thoranee. There's a lot of history here, but you'll have to wait for the book for some of that.

In the mean time, (if you haven't done so already) consider subscribing to get more world building updates. And don't forget to share a link!

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The last couple years have brought a lot of big ideas, and a lot of introspection. Unintentionally. I've thought a lot about careers and hobbies, and as I crossed the threshold of 20 years out of high school, I started to circle back to some of those “where do you see yourself in X years" questions. Probably because I missed the mark on all of them. 18-year-old me would be disappointed that I haven't published a novel. 22-year-old me would be bummed to learn that I haven't sold a screenplay. Hell, 32-year-old me would hate to hear that my basement is still unfinished.

There's a lot that I haven't done, and there's a lot that I've started but never finished. That's probably worse. It's a little bit disheartening to churn out a thousand big ideas and leave them scattered across the floor in varying stages of incomplete—especially when some of those have more than a few attempts piled up.

I'm starting to realize that the main problem is that I try to do too much. This isn't a sob story, nor is it an attempt to fish up some sympathy. It's just an observation. I constantly bite off more than I can chew, and I do that in nearly all areas of my life. I get an idea in my head, and my imagination runs with it—hyper fixation style. Before long, it turns into this monolith, and I get so distracted by the disparity between the current state and end goal that I can't see the steps needed to reach the finish line. Eventually, I get burnt out or distracted and wander off to find the next big idea so I can feel the rush of creativity again. The thing is, I can see the finished product in my head every time. I know what everything will look like when it's done, but I can't break off pieces small enough to get me there.

I did it with The Mark of Shar, this substack, and now I'm doing it again with JAMR and Stellar Empire. So, as someone who thinks that New Year's resolutions are incredibly silly, here I am about to make one. (Un)Fashionably late. As usual.

I'm setting a goal for myself. 100-200 words a day. Minimum. I know it's a small number, but It's doable. I can chew it, but most importantly, I can chew it consistently. It might take 400 days to even hit low-end novel numbers, but I'm OK with that. I need to start somewhere if I ever want to finish.

And now, I'll leave you with a little taste of the opening chapter, but before you go, consider taking a second to share this post.

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The Little Brushwood

This particular story begins somewhere in the middle because I have a flair for the dramatic, and the nerve to believe that even factual accounts can be entertaining when presented in the right order. It is for that reason, that we open with a relatively ordinary human girl. A perfectly plain and unassuming child by the name of Erika Alcaste. Yes. That Erika.

Let's be honest, if Erika heard herself described as “plain,” she'd drag me into a dark alley and stick me full of arrows. No. Plain is, perhaps, the last word anyone would ever use to describe Thoranee’s Little Brushwood. She was a force of nature. Recklessly bold, tough as nails, and unfathomably lucky to boot.

Plain is what her father, Victor Alcaste wanted her to be. Plain and safe. Mind you, not because he thought her incapable. Quite the opposite, in fact. Victor Alaste was no fool. He knew his daughter was likely to make a name for herself. She was very much like her parents in that regard. All the same, that blind courage was the very thing that got her mother killed, and he was determined to spare Erika from a similar fate—even if it meant perpetuating some rather archaic stereotypes.

At this particular point in her life, Erika was exceedingly arrogant, and, some might say, a bit of a busybody with a rather rigid view of right and wrong. She had no problem drawing a line in the sand, and was just as likely to challenge you to cross it—a personality trait inherited from her mother.

Most historians would present Erika as a stunningly attractive young woman, but then most historians are lonely old men with uncomfortable obsessions. The real Erika was not the paragon of beauty so often depicted in the history books. She was short, a tad stocky, and there was always something about her that seemed…unkempt. Hair out of place, clothes that were wrinkled or torn, and a touch of dirt on her hands and face. To say that she was rough around the edges would be both a cliché and an understatement.

She was a positively wild youth with an insatiable thirst for adventure. At seven-years-old, Erika had suffered a broken arm after leaping out of a window to chase a squirrel across the roof of her cottage, or perhaps, more accurately: After attempting to follow the terrified creature from the roof onto a nearby tree. A year later, she broke her arm again attempting to make the same jump. There was no squirrel this time, though. She simply wanted to prove that she could do it—and lost her footing while celebrating the accomplishment.

On her tenth birthday, in a rather fruitless attempt to keep her feet on the ground, Victor gave his daughter the longbow that had belonged to his late wife. It was a magnificent weapon crafted from dark oak with ornate, silvery swirls of leaves and vines carved along its length, and it was decidedly too large for Erika to draw. It did, however, pique her interest. In exchange for her half-hearted commitment to, in her father's words, “settle down,” Victor agreed to give her archery lessons and a bow that was more her size.

As you might expect, Erika was a natural, and while Victor knew how to hit a target, he learned rather quickly that Erika would need more than a toy and a painted bundle of straw hung from a tree. In truth, there was nothing he could teach her that Erika didn't already know by pure instinct. It was as though she was brought into the world with a singular purpose: To become the greatest human marksman the world had ever known, and to do so as rapidly as possible.

Over the next four years, Erika conquered every major tournament in the kingdom, toppling their champions with ease—and no small amount of heckling. Other children loved Erika, but their parents—and the competition—were less enthusiastic. Still, despite the abrasive character flaws, no one could deny her talent—talent which earned her the nickname of “Little Brushwood.” She was 14-years-old, and all of Thoranee agreed that it would take a Brushwood elf to end her win streak. Moreover, much to Victor's dismay, it seemed that the hobby he'd hoped would settle his daughter's thrill seeking ways had become the very thing that drove them. Erika had mastered the bow and was ready to flaunt—or rather pledge—her skills in service to the Royal Guard.

“Absolutely not. There is no place for you in the Royal Guard, and as long as I'm still breathing, there never will be.”

It was soul crushing. Coming from anyone else, it would have been an empty threat. Erika was, after all, an only child, and therefore the first born in her family. By law she was fully entitled to enlist in the Guard. It was only an unspoken tradition that young women passed their birthright on to younger siblings. Thoranee’s military had seen its share of women throughout the kingdom's history, and more than a few had rather historic careers. Of course, none of them had Victor Alcaste for a father.

Victor had the unfortunate pedigree of being both the king's brother and former High Commander of the Royal Guard, and though his days of active service were long behind him, Victor still held sway over the direction of Thoranee’s military development. Even if she did flex her legal right and enroll in the Academy, it would only take a stern look from Victor to have Erika assigned to his personal security detail instead of the ramparts of Northwatch or the Stonespyre Citadel as she so desperately desired.

And so began Erika's unwavering obsession with Furling's spring tournament. That was the key to achieving her goals. Victor clearly didn't think she was good enough. In her mind, that was the only plausible explanation. All she needed to do was prove it to him, and what better way than to beat the elves at their own game? If she could win an archery competition in Furling, that would cement her reputation for all time. The Guard would no doubt beg Victor to let Erika in. Talent like that should never be sidelined.

The only problem with that plan, however, was that Victor refused to let her compete, and, in fact, took direct action to prevent it. Visits to Furling were not uncommon, but the moment Erika expressed an interest in the tournament, schedules miraculously shifted, and those visits began to happen in the summer. Her father insisted that it was simply a better time of year as he had fewer responsibilities at home, and the forests surrounding Furling would be in full bloom. Neither of those claims were entirely untrue, of course, but Erika knew that was not why plans changed.

It seemed she'd never be able to pursue her dreams. That is, until one positively miraculous winter morning when Erika answered a knock at the door to find Grathdor Vahn'iir, the king of Furling, standing on the other side.

I’ve said it before—maybe not here, but I’ve said it. ADHD is a hell of a drug. There’s this classic notion that ADHD means you have trouble focusing or paying attention. People assume you have the attention span of a goldfish, and honestly, sometimes that’s true.

The real truth is a little more complicated, though. ADHD doesn’t mean I can’t focus. More …

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Luck of the Draw

I should start out by saying that I’m incredibly lucky. I have a film degree. I’ve wanted to make movies for a living since I was 9, and I’ve been doing not that for my entire professional career. Why does that make me lucky? It’s lucky because I sort of fell into a backup that I still enjoy. Maybe not…

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The hunt for a signature cocktail starts with the alcohol. It is, after all, an essential component to a cocktail, and if I’m going to craft a signature drink, I need to pick something that represents me. Something significant. What’s the story behind the choice? Why does this fit my style (or lack thereof, I suppose).

Bourbon feels like the obvious choi…

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Ok, so first off, if you were expecting another world building chapter this week, I apologize. There’s more coming, but ADHD had other plans, and I had a new idea that I needed to run with for a minute. Don’t look at me like that. I told you this thing runs on pure chaos. Just roll with it.

Anyway—as you may have seen, I’ve been playing with Chat GPT and…

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All aboard the hype train! No, seriously. I'm just gonna cut to the chase here. I was strapped for ideas, so I just threw a list of ingredients at Chat GPT, and said “surprise me!”

For better or worse, this is the result. Don't get me wrong—it tastes good and all, but uh, well, I won't pretend that I'm not a little bit concerned with how quickly the robo…

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In the beginning, there was nothing. That’s how it always starts. Empty, dark and lonely. The world of Aluron was just a formless expanse, crafted by the Makers and filled with potential. Your probably asking yourself: “Who are the Makers?”

No one knows.

Well, that’s not strictly true, I suppose. Technically I know since I created them, but now I’m breaki…

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Ok, let's talk about the elephant in the room. I don't know how to plate a salad.

They always look gross. Always. Doesn't matter how I set it up. I try layering everything. I try tossing it. Nothing works. It's like a defense mechanism. Like my brain is saying “Dude. You don't want this. You want a bucket of onion rings and a baker’s dozen of pizza puffs…

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A few weeks ago, I got a text from my brother with a link to Jose Cuervo’s Margarita Shakeup competition. If you hang around long enough, you’ll learn pretty quickly that I love margaritas, and I feel like I know how to throw together a couple pretty killer options, so naturally, I had to put my name in the pot. Enter the Sweet Heat Margarita (which you…

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It's probably no surprise that an avid gamer is advocating for kids playing video games. Maybe it's just the circles I'm in, but it feels like there's this weird aversion to screens for children, and it's growing.

As technology becomes more deeply rooted in our everyday lives, it feels like people in my parents' generation are becoming more vocal about t…

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I spend a lot of time creating stories. Most stuff never sees the light of day. It just sits in my subconscious as one off snippets of dialog or vague plot concepts. Sometimes those small ideas take off. Rapidly. This is a peek behind the curtain for one of those.

About seven years ago, I was working on a new story (which you can read here). It started as a simple writing exercise. The initial premise was for the main character to be stuck in total darkness. We're talking the kind of dark where you could touch your eyeballs and still not see your finger.

That was it. There was no real plot, just an arbitrary gimmick to force myself to write something a little different.

What unfolded as I started writing was a horror story that featured a group known as the Cult of the Faceless. The cult's members wore form-fitting, featureless masks that covered their entire face. Think along the lines of white morph suits, but almost leathery.

The point of the masks was to keep playing with the darkness gimmick, so that even in the few moments the lights came on, there was still something the main character couldn't see, and faces felt like the most unsettling option.

In the story, the main character is a prisoner of the cult being tortured for some sinister, unknown purpose, and inevitably, that got me thinking. Why? What does the cult want with the main character? Why put him through this?

For the sake of the story at hand, it didn't matter. He was never going to figure it out, but when you're crafting a story, the most believable worlds exist beyond the page. They were there before the first sentence, and they continue past the end—well, except when your story is about the literal end of the world, I suppose.

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Yep, it's that time of year again. Tell me you’re Catholic without telling me…wait. Does this count as telling you? I don’t know. Doesn’t matter. These tacos are a slam dunk any day of the week Lent or otherwise. If you have the time to fry them, anyway.

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Just look at that badly cropped photo! Apparently I can't measure images either. Or is that part of the gimmick? You decide!

Ok, so, I know it looks like a glass of orange juice with an ice cube in it, but it's not. That would be stupid. This is not stupid. This is a mango chile margarita, and it's wonderful.

Cocktails are a weird experience for me, becau…

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Ok, so here’s the deal. No one likes boring cheesecake. Not really. There are so many other options out there, so why would you stick with plain? That’s like choosing vanilla ice cream when you could have a full blown sundae.

Sorry. That’s a terrible analogy. I’d choose the vanilla ice cream every time. Anyway. Like …

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The Everwood is sacred. The Everwood is vengeful. The Everwood is night and day, good and evil. It is everything, and it is nothing.

The forest is alive, but its origin and its nature remain a mystery. The only thing we know for certain is that the Everwood is fickle. There is an energy that flows within you as you pass th…

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I’ve done it! I don’t know if you’ve done the math here, but technically it's been more than 9 days. Whatever. Look how cool this thing is!

Once I started putting the top on, the pace picked up quite a bit. I was expecting all the small details to take a long time—mainly because I often have trouble seeing those pieces in the instructions. In the end, t…

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