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The Vault of Dreamers Map

Map Day

Map Day

My new novel, The Vault of Dreamers, takes place at the Forge School, an elite arts academy where every student is perpetually filmed for a reality TV show.  The isolated campus of the boarding school is in the prairie of Kansas, where future weather fluctuates between tropical rainstorms and sunny, cool fall days.  The setting, with its thousands of cameras, simultaneously bolsters the fame of the creative students and robs of them of their privacy.  That mix of pressure is a key element for… Continue reading

The Last Map

I put the final touches on the map for Promised last week.  It’s funny, because on paper it doesn’t look like I did much, but the thought process and the designing were actually rather involved.  I began with the original, oversized map from Birthmarked and took a trip down to Staples to make 11×18” copies of it in pieces to tape together.  The taping part reminded me of grade school, when I first delighted in matching up edges so lines across ripped pages looked continuous, healed.

Then… Continue reading

Mapping Unreal Places


Map of Wharfton and the Enclave

A summer ago, in Minnesota, I sat in my Aunt Rosemary’s lodge overlooking Island Lake and prepared to draw the map of Wharfton and the Enclave.  My son Michael and niece Maura offered to help.  I had the places all in my head, visually, but it was harder to set them down than I expected.  Logistics intruded.  It was important, for instance, that Gaia would be unlikely to stumble upon Mace’s bakery on her first trip to the prison, but… Continue reading