Making a Map of Esk
Some of my gathered photo inspiration and early travel sketches.
Esk was a worldbuilding project from my sketchbook and notebook before I started writing stories to publish. The first foundations of it came from many different places – my very old sketchbooks full of fantasy stories, photos and moments from travelling, little facets of the town I live in, and, of course, all my favourite aesthetics and atmospheres tumbled together into one lovely collage of cosy moments and rainy weather.
The first rough map formed while my partner and I were staying in Bath, years ago. It was autumn, we were tired after a year of travelling, and we spent a lot of our days just walking around the streets, telling stories to each other. Those days are still very precious to me, and so I wove them into the fabric of my worldbuilding project - if you look at a map of Bath, you might find similarities to Esk!
About Esk
Esk is a mid-sized town on the isle of Elveresk. Not the largest, or the busiest, but by far the wealthiest. It is where the seat of power is - the Admiralty and its airships, and the Crown, who manages the aetherwell that lies beneath Esk and helps manage the dangerous storms that beset the archipelago every summer. The two powers work together (mostly) to keep the islands of the archipelago safe.
The current ‘official’ map looks something like this, as of the publishing of All Woven With Ivy.
The map I plot things on as I write, however, looks more like the map below. It’s less pretty, but holds more information. There are tram lines, flood zones, and even a very rough-and-ready sketch in of topography. There are a few things I haven’t added locations for yet, such as the train lines, food markets, ferry docks, stables, and barracks. The map grows as the stories build up! (And of course, things change).
You can see Esk through the eyes of a newcomer in my free novelette Windfall, available here.
Or spend a rainy spring with Harriet and Arte, two artisans working on Willow Isle in the centre of the River Lune, in the novella The Muse of Missing Pieces.
Or read my novel All Woven In Ivy (June 12th) to delve under the city and into the mysterious Gardens, where the sacred springs flow.
Esk is a place with many stories to tell, and many more secrets to discover. Where on the map would you go first, if you were a visitor to Esk?