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Monday, August 3, 2015

It Feels Good to Be Back

I know I've taken a very long break from my blog. I've spent the last while working two jobs in order to get myself in a better place with my career and I let all extra writing go by the wayside.

I'm pleased to announce that my career is headed in a great direction, I only have one job, and I'm back into writing. It feels good. Actually I do a lot of writing because my day job is as a technical writer for Compass Minerals. But I'm now making headway with my latest book again.

I just purchased a 100-year-old map of Philadelphia (the setting for the historical young adult novel I'm working on) and I'm excited for it to come in the mail. I've always loved old maps, anyway. This one is just extra special because I'm going to frame it and then draw all over the glass with wet-erase markers. When I'm done with the novel, it will be a fun decoration. In the meantime, it's research.

Even though readers don't need, or want, turn-by-turn directions of where characters move around the city, maps are an essential part of designing the story. If the author doesn't know where the characters are traveling, over time it will show.

This is new to me a little bit, though. My last book was fantasy and I drew rough sketches of my maps to keep the information straight. Writing about true events in a real city is a new and exciting thing for me.