A link out of the silence...

Hello everyone, your friendly neighbourhood imposter-author here.
(ref: previous post - thank you to everyone who commented, I do read your comments, laugh, smirk, nod my head with paternal sagacity at them all.)

Just a quick post to point you all to an excellent article over at Lobster & Canary where fellow author, Daniel A. Rabuzzi, waxes wise upon Mister Mervyn Peake and a more southern fantastical tradition. I am finding it very helpful (I speak in present tense for its help is still with me) in remembering that with all my Tolkienesque desire to make the Half-Continent firm (hello explicariums!!!), it was always intended to be also grotesque, a place where caricature is its normal - I had forgotten this. So Thank you Mister Rabuzzi, for reminding me of my first love, as it were.

(You might notice that this humble imposter is also mentioned in the article, which is in truth not why I recommend it to you, but because it is a subject so close to my heart: for Peake is the reason we even have the Half-Continent at all, that we are even communing, you and I)

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Well, how are the dice making projects coming along?

Well, how are the dice making projects coming along? Better than my blogging frequency, I hope :)

Once again it is well overdue for me to post.

Exciting news (I hope) is that I am working on two books at the moment: one an edit/rewrite of The Corsers' Hinge to (again, I hope) be released as a stand alone novella, complete with maps, illustrations, a brief explicarium and other appendical (not a real word) matter. Do people want to see this? If it happens it is more likely to come out first.

The second is a proper novel that the more I work on it, the more I feel might stretch out into the usual fat, multi-volume "epic" (for want of a better word) I found myself stumbling into with MBT. It will not (as I might have said before... or was that just in a dream...?) be about Rossamünd and Europe this time around, but I hope you are going to really like the new fellow in the spot light (as it were) - he really takes up where dear little Rosey left off.

This is all what I would like but it is yet to be accepted/approved/green lit/let come into exiatence so prayers/good wishes/positive quantum flow all appreciated.

This does not mean I have abandoned the Branden Rose or her little man, just that I am trying out the Half-Continent from a different point of view. This is actually a significant element of the overall thesis of the Half-Continent: that it came well before I had any concept of specific characters and contains stories from many different points of view yet they are all interconnected - not so much sequel spin-offs but distinct folk who overlap in what I hope are conceivably realistic ways. For example, the protagonist for this new tale plays a very tiny role in Factotum, just as a teaser.

As for Duchess-in-Waiting of Naimes and Rosey-me-lad, well, Lord willing we shall see where they are at again in the future.

And in answer to you request, Master Come Lately, here be a map showing the rough political boundaries of the Sundergird. Such things are necessarily vague in a land without satellite imaging/modern political wrangling and all such modern/our-world stuff that makes out own maps so punctiliously delineated. I hope you like, and more importantly it helps you-all over there at the Forum.

The tabs, Madam Blackwood, are those Post-It [TM] tabs you buy at your local stationer, and I have used different colours depending which book I writing (yellow-green = Foundling, pink = Lamplighter, sky blue = Factotum, dark blue = navy/newest stories... its getting vague, be good to clarify to myself once more) marking a large number of my notebooks in this way at all the pertinent entries for each story as I find them: I sit on my couch and trawl a notebook for anything I might need to know for that current tale, typically scribbling on the tab what the entry it flags is about.

Ahh, Master Alyosha, as always you make my day(s): Pococo is actually Italian for "freckles" - I use Italian/Spanish for localised colloquialism of Tutin which one can especially encounter in such areas like western Seat, Tuscanin and across to Catalain.

Hello, hello Troubadour! Wonderful to hear about you project - apologies for the lack of a more full depiction of troubardiers. Perhaps Appendix 2 of Factotum gives some idea, just add the sash as shown in Appendix 3 Factotum around the back. And now I am going to be a drag/punctilious pain-in-the-rear and offer that the proper spelling is troubardier - the concept being that they are soldiers (the "~ier" bit) who wear proofing/armour (the "~bard~" bit) that is fully protecting (the "trou~" or "true" bit) *please don't punch me* Will you be showing us you wondrous work when it is done? Can it be seen in its incomplete state at all? If need more keep asking.

An art book, huh, Emily Odenwald? Well, I reckon this will be worth doing once I have a bit more "art" under me belt. MBT is just one story and I hope I have a few more in me to tell on the Half-Continent yet, a body of work from which a selection of "art" (appendices, illustrations, maps etc) would be selected. As for manga/graphic novel - sweet! If I was to do such a thing, to stave off boredom I think I would tell an entirely new story.

And yes, dear dear Portals old blog-friend, until the conquest by the Tutelarchs and then re-conquest by their descendants/heirs the Tutins, the Soutlands were a collection of independent city-states warring and combining as political need moved. The Germanic names shows the influence of crossing cultures, of Gottish people coming over the Pontus Canis to dwell in the Soutlands.

Well, a long blog makes up for a long pause.

I hope you are all well.

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Who lives where in the Harthe Alle

In an as usually belated response to a continuing question about the inhabitants of the Half-Continent and beyond I have put this map up again but now with all new NUMBERS![TM] by which I intend to answer said query. So here 'tis:

1/ Southeastern tip of Nenin, in the continent known as the Occident = Oriental derived cultures;

2/ Western coast of Heil, called Tung and home to a peoples derived from Mongol/ central asian cultures;

3/ Heilgoland proper, an empire based somewhat on Russian/ central European cultures;

4/ I cannot remember what this area is called specifically but it is home to a wide group of wild folk;

5/ The somewhat mythic lands of Fiele, little is known of here but that perhaps its is a land of sedorners and many monsters;

6/ The (Greater) Derelands, original home of the Skylds (for those who recall the history of Ingebiarge), origin of greater derehunds (most excellent tykehouds) and home of the Hagenards and various other peoples based on Nordic cultures;

7/ Parthia, wide lands, home of wild Hun-like folks;

8/ The Brigandine States, home of the pirate kings;

9/ The very southern edge of the Principalitine States, based on Indian/ Moghul cultures;

10/ The N'go, spread with vaguely African-based cultures of various attitudes to monsterkind;

11/ Turkmantine Empire, the Haacobin empire's most constant foe, based on Ottoman culture;

12/ The Half-Continent, home of the Haacobin and Gott Empires plus minor free peoples, based on western European cultures;

13/ Lausid elector kings and Ing, the former based on Polish culture moving through Hungarian culture and ending in north central Asian cultures;

14/ Dhaghestahn = basically Persian in source.

I surely hope this does not ruin it for people, knowing my sources, my intent; the hope is to show my thinking and give you a sense that there is more to come (Lord willing) beyond Monster-Blood Tattoo.

Also, Magos Kasen asked...
I am not sure if this has been answered before, but are nickers and bogles hunted as sport sometimes? And are they edible?
Why yes, yes they are, especially by the wealthy sporting sets (and the wild kings of Parthis and eastern Derelands, the brave white-skinned souls of Heilgoland amongst others), and as to their edibility, that would depend entirely on the taste buds and squeamishness of each person, but in a general sense, yes, they are edible. That being said, to the goodly, civilised folk of the Half-Continent such an idea is abhorrent. Great question.

...and sorry that I have once again taken so long to post - too much bookface and getting lost in the writing...

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Beyond the Half-Continent.

Here is a (very!) rough prototype scribble of the possible formation of landmasses about the Half-Continent, a fair part of the southern lands of the Harthe Alle (snazzed up a bit with fancy computer trickery). This is still an ongoing exploration for me, which keeps things fun.



The pallid areas are landmasses, the orange to glaucous the oceans (the colour shift representing climactic/temperature change = north hotter as you approach the 'equator', cooler the further south you wend). The solid red mass is the Half-Continent as revealed to you in the Monster-Blood Tattoo books and on the map site. The names in parenthesis are largely old even forgotten appellations for the regions at the time of the Phlegms.

Given the size of the Half-Continent already, I think this would make the whole 'planet' rather large indeed. I believe that though our earth is the optimal calibration for life, a much larger globe is theoretically possible, and even if it weren't, it is now.

And welcome to our 100th follower!... and our 99th, 98th, 97th oh, dang it! Welcome to you all!

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A word by any other word.

This week's word is:

calimere.

I have no idea what it means yet, just found it today as the word verification code to place my comment on the previous post. It could either have something to do with potives - maybe a piece of equipment; perhaps some type of swamp, or the name for a place... hmmm.

It is always a joy to find new things that grow the Half-Continent and once I have settled on new word and its meaning, or developed a concept further, though it might be freshly minted it always feels like it has ever been that way far back into time. Odd, huh?

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MBT Professions-gluttony Query

Well MooseGuy was wanting to be a scourge-leer-pistoleer-strivener and I said I would come up with a name for such a person/profession. Well... I came up with everything but:

• scourge-pistoleer = flagrant, orspirator/orspiratine
• scourge-wit = severine
• scourge-leer = staide, austerine
• skold-leer = scryer, saltscry, saltstrait
• skold-pistoleer = locksalt (though really, such a person is really a skold with a penchant for delivering potives from a firelock)
• leer-pistoleer = scrylock, lockstrait, straitlock
• wit-leer = looksooth, straitsooth

...and I could go on. Now, it must be said at any such combinations are not as common as you might think, especially as true pistoleers - like sagaars - see themselves as a set apart, with secret knowledge and dedication to a singular expertise in a single skill. Indeed, sagaars are even more rigourous about this; for them it is all about the purity of the Dance with out taints, cheats or augmentations . A person might gain some fundamental moves of the dance (akin to basic and more intermediate martial arts), but if you call yourself a sagaar it is because you have committed to a way off living, to a higher plan of existence. (sorry, giantfan)

As for Mr Guy-of-Moose's combination, well I was thinking, sir, you might want to have a go at coming up with your own name, for such a combination would be most probably unique to you and therefore have no common name in the Half-Continent. FYI - messing about with highly unstable and dangerous potives whilst wrestling with the instability of you mimeotes (foreign organs) you could expect to have a rather short life span, even without the ubiquitous threat of a terrible gashing end.

It is worth noting that these names might change over time and with further thinking and revision; just like most other things H-c, I am constantly reworking and adding and subtracting to ideas - especially as I get deeper and deeper into the world with each novel. It can be a tad disconcerting to discover in writing a story that something I thought pretty well thought out over many years of natural accretion plus solid hours of think-time proves to be just barely enough to start with, that I need to go much further into notions and inventions than I had ever anticipated.

It is a good problem to have, I reckon.

(Oh! I have realised it is April Fools today, but I cannot think of anything funny - though plenty that is foolish)

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Evolution of a map

Now not so long ago (last post in fact) a Nonny Mouse asked me: "... could you maybe talk a bit about the HC map in a future entry, how you went about creating it...?" Well, of course I would - a very helpful idea for a post, to boot.

A map of the Half-Continent and beyond has existed for some time in early, much-rubbed-out and re-worked versions. Below would be version 2.-something (ie: second attempt but with marks added removed added removed and so...) drawn around the years 1999-2000.

(The Half-Continent is the bottom centre area with "Castor" and "Pollux" written on it - this is the region that is the map published in MBT. As you can see I conceive of much more about it - my hope and prayer is I get to explore it with you all one day.)

It is an incomplete mess, having abandoned it as not being quite right - I was not fully decided on just what names where more important than others, on what words actually belonged on the map and just how parts of it should actually look. This all takes time andif I find I am not content/convinced of something putting it down until some new notion - some happenstance of life - brings a fresh approach.

I have always sought to get the shape of landforms and location of places just right, hence all the re-working. The map is in many ways just one long list of favourite words gathered together in one context and given a spacial/visual relationship to each other.

In 2003 I began to feel a clearer connection with one part of the H-c at least - the region known as Gottland or the GottSkylds. On the way aboard the bus to my job connecting residential phone-lines and home again I fashion this proto-type in notebook 23, shifting and rearranging with liquid-paper and smudgy pen.

Not long after completing this, the opportunity to begin MBT was sent my way (halelujah!) and in the process of grappling actually writing a full-blown story in the H-c I knew the time had come to make a map, if not of the greater world about, well of the Half-Continent itself at least. I felt I could not get into it with out have a clear idea where one place was to the next - where could Rossamünd go if I did not know where he started from actually was. I certainly had an idea but the moment had arrived to make it "official" as it were.

Now I have - and still do - hesitate to nail ideas complely down, knowing that so many of them have matured so sweetly if given time to develop. Yet there comes a moment when bullets must be bitten and some part of all these years of ideas be fixed, enough at least to allow further development. Consequently, feling very good about the arrangement of places and land, I scanned above notebook scetch map (plus a couple more less ones) into Photoshop and used it as a foundation to build the rest of the map from. Then I gathered all the place names I had collected scattered about all my notebooks and beyond and began to position then and reposition them, drawing out the coast digitally as I went, making large exploratory marks and refining them as the sense of the whole place clarified and solidified.

The Half-Continent map is a Photoshop file (not the correct program to use at all, but the one I am by far the most proficient with) made of more layers than is practicable. Yet being in said format allowed me to really cut and paste and reform coastlines and riverine systems until it all felt just right. I have to confess that my first go at it was more Tolkeinesque (I wonder how he'd feel about his name being used in such a way?) with those lumpy hill things and tiny little trees. It did not quite sit right and Dyan, my publisher, was completely correct when she harangued me over its "not-workingness".

I my heart I was really in love with the maps of real history, those gorgeous items made the 17th and 18th centuries. Given this and that I want to make the H-c as plausible as possible, I researched up a bit more on the form of these old maps and adopted a more realistic approach. One of my favourite discoveries was the wind-roses and their associated rhumb-lines.

Posistioned at junctions of latitude and longitude they are an aid to dead-reckoning, where a master or captain or navigator with arrive at such a juction and be fairly confident from an study of the map that proceeding from that point on a certain heading will take them, over time, to a particualr places. I like the idea of the Half-Continent map actually being a map a seafarer on the vinegar waves would be able to use to get about the littora.

Having done all this to my satisfaction (one month solid later) I added the textured back ground, which is made up of all sorts of layers of bad-scan smudges, dirty painted paper, even bits of that early v2.-something map. I would tell myself a story as to why some of the marks were there: the large red smear in the top left corner being spilt soup, the greenish stains in the bottom left being potive marks, some of the off blues in the middle being mold, the red mark in the bottom right maybe even a dried blood stain. All a whole lot of fun.

Now I just have to pull my finger out and get the online map happening. It is turning out to be more complicated then I first conceived, so please be patient - writing books keeps getting in my way ;P

Anyway, I hope this goes some way to answering the question.

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Ex Libris

This time I thought I would show you what the Australia/New Zealand MBT edition endpapers look like, just to give those in other publishing regions a chance to see what they otherwise might not.

First is the book plate for Foundling, actually printed black on brown, done in this scheme because this is the mottle of Boschenberg.

Secondly (and unsurprisingly) is the book plate for Lamplighter, done in the mottle of the Haacobin Empire. The owl is what the lamplighters affectionately refer to as Ol' Barny, the Sagacious Owl that is the sigil of the Haacobins.

The idea is to give to those who are into it a sense of the books actually belonging in the Half-Continent - as coming from there somehow, to add just that little bit more immersion to the experience, to actually make the owning, holding and reading of the book as sensorialy satisfying as possible.

It has so far been a great joy to figure out what plate to do for each book, a challenge which asks me to go deeper into the world than previously. Indeed, I thought I had a lot of information after 30-odd notebooks on their own, but actually writing and designing for the MBT series has me going much further into the Half-Continent than I expected. I can not say I mind either (well, not most days anyway).

Next challenge: Book 3 (Factotum) - I have my thoughts... in fact it was writing this post that gave me an idea...

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Steampunk - to steam or not to punk?

I found - well "found" is a bit of a fib, I was actually Google-alerted to the existence of this post... anyway - I was alerted to this interesting and most excellent article by S.F.Winser upon the humble topic of "steampunk", which included a brief mention of my own work.

Now, previously I would have reacted with a little heat to someone lumping MBT into the steampunk genre because by my own definition of the term, MBT has neither steam nor magic crammed together in that wonderfully uncomfortable manner that is a hallmark of the scene (such as in Mr Mieville's wonderful world). Neither is the Half-Continent and the lands about a Victorian world (as sooooo many keep mistakenly identify it - I defy anyone to show me evidence of the wearing of tri-corner hats in Victorian England, except perhaps by the most rustic) - no it is as, I have conceived it, Georgian, Hanovarian and a wee bit of the Enlightenment too.

Yet if you take Mr Winser's definition: "Steampunk comes from a time when a scientist could make anything in his basement. It might be something clunky-looking, it might be something beautiful - but dammit it would look interesting and it would work..." then, by the precious here and vere! it IS most certainly steampunk, through and through. Some of my earliest writings upon the H-c and beyond were of benighted laboratories where mad dabblers concocted wickedness to let loose on the ignorant world, and people would disappear to end up as parts in a some thrice-wretched experiment.

So steam the punks I say, though maybe go easy on the steam and invite some frock-coated folk along instead.

(I must confess I quoted Mr Winser's article without permission - I hope he does not mind, it is done in the spirit of conversation. If you do mind, sir, I apologise and humbly ask you if I might use this quote...)

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So who in the Half-Continent would you be?

It occurred to me that it might be really rather interesting to know that if folks were citizens of the Half-Continent what type of person they might be?

• What would be your name?
• What part of the Half-Continent would you live in?
• What would be your social station?
• What profession might you choose?
• Would you be a sedorner (monster-lover) or invidist (monster-hater) or somewhere in between?
• What would you look like?
• Would you have spoors or cruorpunxis?
• What else would be interesting about you?

I am thinking I could perhaps do a little profile of each response in the side bar, a new one for each month - and "Introducing..." kind of thing. Please, answer one, some or all of these as you feel, let the world (and me) know - I reckon this might be a tad fun.

Oh - and Happy Thanksgiving to those for whom it is relevant!

(I am also wondering where random missfitt has got to... hello, are you there, sir?)

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