Richard [K] Morgan's News and Views

So it's out - the B format MMP of The Steel Remains, complete with reader-drawn map of the Yhelteth Empire and Trelayne League territories to the north. A handsome piece of work if ever I saw one and, I am assured by its author, utterly geographically sound. Not to mention revised numerous times with fanatical attention to detail.

See, the competition winner, one Ravi Shankar, turned out to be not just a fan of my books, not just a fantasy fan in general, but also an enthusiastic amateur fantasy map-maker. Anybody else know these people exist? Well, it was news to me. Anyway, Ravi's entry to the competition blew every other submission out of the water - and that's no reflection on the quality of other submissions. Ravi's map was full-colour shaded, painstakingly scaled and contoured, and accompanied by three pages of small-font notes explaining the rationale behind each mapping choice he'd made. Not only that, but when we sat down to dinner, he grilled me thoroughly on any discrepancies between what he'd drawn and what I'd imagined, explained gently to me why some of what I'd imagined, ahem, didn't quite stand up to geographical sense, Richard, and then insisted on incorporating all the agreed changes and sending me the revised copy for approval. Three times over. He even included a couple of extra place names for me that don't crop up in The Steel Remains at all, but which feature prominently in the sequel.

He also turned out to be great company. Malaysian-born, British-educated, London-based - a high-powered litigative lawyer in the corporate employment field, governed from what I could see as much by conscience and principle as by career, well-travelled, a connoisseur of good wine (and a seasoned consumer of same), a mercurial and erudite conversationalist, a fine story-teller. Seems stereotyping of the epic fantasy readership has been a little wide of the mark....

Anyway, you can check out his work (aside from the example in the book) at www.cartographersguild.com. And, Ravi, if you're reading - take a much-deserved bow, man.

Now - I've got to go and get Ringil out of Hinerion before he has to kill anybody else; fortunately he has a map (and now so do I).