Halcyon sketches (spoiler-free)

 As promised, a pair of sketches (one complete with authentic coffee stain!) that I drew before writing Halcyon Years. I'd worked out the basic parameters of the story at this point, putting in the locales I knew I'd need, but there are a few bits and pieces which didn't end up playing much of a role in the book. All of the following is revealed in the first few chapters of the book, by the way, so no fear of giving away anything crucial - although if you'd like to go in totally cold, obviously, read no more.

The first one (click to embiggen) is a basic cross-section of Halcyon. I didn't really have a set idea of how big it needed to be, but 50 km long seemed about right for the type of story I was intending. I was thinking, very roughly, of something about the size of greater Los Angeles. I wanted there to be room enough for distinct settlements with countryside between them, not just one big city, and I also wanted roads and railway lines, and especially the former, so I could have cars. I decided that the ship would be completely closed, with no windows to the outside universe, and that there'd need to be a long, thick tube running down the middle to give the illusion of sky.

The little sketch to the bottom right of the picture is me working out for myself what rough percentage of the interior would be visible from any given position on the inner surface. As you can see, it's never possible to see the opposite side of the tube.

The second sketch (also click to embiggen) is the complete interior rolled out as a map:

As mentioned, there's stuff in there that doesn't come into the final story, and which may or may not be in contradiction with it, such as the island in the middle of Midlake. That was going to be a kind of private retreat for the DelRossos, but in the end I decided not to bother with it, just letting them have their estate and the luxury yacht. I wasn't going to draw another map just because the story took me in a slightly different direction.

Should these or tidied-up versions have been included in the book? I'm not sure. Perhaps because I wasn't a big reader of fantasy, I've never expected to see a map at the beginning of a book, and those few times when I encountered one in an SF context, I never found it all that helpful. But that's just me.