One of the interesting aspects of writing fiction is that, unless you decide to use existing locations, you have to invent stuff.
For Books of Loukas, I decided fairly early on that although the locations would bear more than a passing resemblance to places I have visited or which I know about, I would not, except in the broadest geographical sense, use real places. Instead I would invent places, although I wanted them to be plausible and as real-sounding as possible.
This left me with the challenge of inventing a lot of places. There is Loukas itself, the initial center of the books, which I had to invent from scratch, plus the surrounding areas and other locations.
In particular, the second part of the Books of Loukas series involves the School travelling to new exotic locations. Since I have been re-examining the later books, as part of Getting My Act Together beyond Book 1, I decided that I needed to finish the definition of the geographical areas over which the School will range on their adventures.
I had already defined several locations in the tropics, but now I have sorted them out fully (at least for now).
Here’s a teaser. A map of the Saya Archipelago. An imaginary tropical archipelago in the Indian Ocean.
There is a lot to invention. The maps are only a small part of the overall work program. As part of creating this diagram, I had to consider and create:
- The location (which had to be sort-of-plausible)
- The names of the atolls (which takes thought and research, not just linguistically, but also in the context of the back-story, for every location on Earth has a back-story)
- The size, dimensions, characteristics of the locations (down to some quite detailed, er, details, since those will come up in the actual novels)
- The history of the locations (which fits in with 2 above, this is also part of the novel series, in the background book, but also in the individual books as sidebars)
There are a number of more detailed maps from which this map was constructed. If you want the details…you will need to wait for the books. Coming soon to an e-book reader near you.