Thread: Another Canuck saying hello

Another long-time lurker saying "hello" to you all. I've been most impressed by the wide variety and superb quality of many of the artists I've seen here...some really brilliant work!

While an aspiring novelist of fantasy/historical fiction, I'm a technical writer by trade (I write the dull, boring, unimaginative instruction manuals that nobody reads when they buy a new product...that's why companies have help desks, right? ) and supplement that with doing miscellaneous other writing -- often involving public reductions of technical subjects or acting as a literary go-between to allow a company's management to have some vague idea what its specialist employees are actually working on.

The bulk of my creative writing has either been heavily character-driven (when the geography isn't as crucial to the story as long as it's plausible and maintains continuity) or has been set in historical periods where I can easily source highly detailed maps. Recently I've begun preliminary work on a new project where I want a much broader scope to the narrative -- geo-political intrigue, larger scale field campaigns, etc. -- which will be set in a fictitious world, thus demanding I create the sort of background details that I've had in my historical work. The more I work on it, the more I realize how crucial a role geography plays in so many little details. gradually pushing me to the point where I really need to sit down and create large scale, detailed maps to act as the underpinning for the development of all of the rest. That quest has led me here...