A Nocturne for Novellas

I forgot to post about my latest release. So here goes.

"A Nocturne in Red" is available at Amazon for e-readers and in print. It's the inaugural story of Sanjen of Shar, a lute-wielding bard, who gets into all kinds of trouble. Last August, The Society of Misfit Stories was awesome enough to publish it for a few months,but since it's no longer available through their site, I decided to throw it back out there myself. 

I'm hoping the tale is the launching point for many stories featuring this troubled character. Sanjen is full of personality and inner demons--and what won't he do to protect those he loves? Read the first several pages at Amazon or at my site.

Along with the story, I've converted my hand-drawn maps of Tanerra with Wonderdraft. Behold, Sanjen's world:

Click for a full-size view.

Maps To Show the Way

Good to know where we're going, right?

As a fantasy author, one of my dearest loves is world-building and drawing maps. And as a reader of fantasy fiction, I rely on well-rendered maps to navigate my way through the novels of others. Maps are like a perk of fantasy fiction that readers of real-life fiction don't get to savor.

So, yes, when I published the Falcons Saga, I included maps. At least in the print editions. These were carefully rendered -- in pen -- and painstakingly cleaned up with GIMP. At least, with the few skills I had acquired for GIMP.

So imagine my excitement when I came across Wonderdraft -- a program designed just for map rendering.

A couple of days ago, an old acquaintance from the LegendFire days posted a link to this amazingness. I followed the link down the rabbit hole and expected to see a price tag comparable to Photoshop. I also feared a lengthy learning curve and weeks of frustration just to get land to pop from ocean. *cue the heavenly choir* Only $30 and two days later, I am in map-rendering heaven.

The manual is short (needing a proofreader such as myself, but hey, nothing is perfect), the interface clean, the process well-designed and user-friendly. I experienced almost zero stress learning how it works. On a stress scale of 1 to 10, maybe a 1.5, for just a couple of seconds. Next, I'll be checking out all the community-built assets which ought to allow me to add all kinds of borders, symbols, and textures. And as a font fanatic, I will certainly be looking into importing waaaaay more fonts. But the basic package provides plenty to get started.

All those old black-and-white renderings of Aralorr? Revamped into glorious full color. Check it out!

Map and names, copyright by Court Ellyn 2019

Click to enlarge. I'll be adding these to my website shortly. So much better!