Chateau Clare Floor Plan, Maps, and Art

 

A scene from the story - Lan meeting Cia at Mayfair Square

Since the Chateau Clare, the estate that Lan Taya inherits is central to the story, I had initially considered painting a view of it as the cover art. However, I know that painting buildings in any detail is not my strong point as a painter. I'm more comfortable more organic forms and the "impression" of buildings. In addition, as a practical consideration, given the portrait shape of the cover, if I wanted to fit the whole chateau in on the front cover, it would've had to have been very small, with a lot of sky. Instead, I chose the more intimate scene, above, for the cover. It has Lan meeting Cia at Mayfair Square on a summer's morning. It is the type of scene I am more comfortable painting. My inspiration for the cover was the painting below, one of my earlier paintings. I didn't quite get the richness of the sunlight that was present in Crescent Morning, but I ain't the painter I used to be.

Crescent Morning

Having painted the scene, I then, in Gimp, added the black outlines, the so-called "cartoon" effect to the painting, which I feel gives the painting a bit more crispness and texture, making it a little more interesting, at least for a book cover. I need all the help I can find these days. I usually add this effect to all my cover art. 

I like books with maps. And so...

I felt that to describe the chateau and its interior I, at least, needed a floor plan of the place. I am not a draftsman, so the drawing are a bit crude, but using graph paper I laid out the floor plan of the chateau - a good exercise in making sure that I knew what I was talking about when moving about the chateau. Below are the floor plans for Chateau Clare that I drew up for my use. They will at least be in the print version, and maybe the ebook as well.

As for the appearance of the chateau, Lan Taya, who discovers that he has inherited a chateau, describes the chateau, on his first sight of it, as looking like a factory building - the effect of all of its many large, small-paned windows. And indeed, that is what I drew my inspiration from - an old factory building in France that I passed by in one of my YouTube virtual train rides. 

The chateau is located some 20 km south of Celora, the capital city of Lorria, on the Isle of Autumn. This island is an "island" created by a wide loop in the River Fair around a long ridge, which has been made into an island by a canal and a series of locks that were cut through the narrow base of the loop to shorten the distance barges have to travel to the city from the sea, and manage river depth. The Isle of Autumn is the exclusive haunt of the Great Houses and New Wealth of Lorria. Its river shore is lined with these large estates. Chateau Clare is one such mansion, located on the south shore of the Isle. I've made a rather simple sketch of the chateau and grounds below. 

I also did a small painting of Autumn Avenue, which is the road that circles the Isle of Autumn. It is lined on both sides by the walled estates. The isle also has its own tram lined, the tracks which you can see along the left of the road.

And finally, I created a map of the central portion of the city of Celora, showing the locations mentioned in the novel. Being founded by settlers from the Solar System, rather than growing organically over a long time, it was laid out in a strict grid, with boroughs created by wide boulevards and avenues. These grand roads have elevated tram rail lines running down their center boulevard. Where the grand boulevards and avenues cross, there are large traffic circles, with the raised elevated train stations in the middle of the circle with walkway bridges to the four corners of the intersection. I've named some of the boroughs created by the grid of grand avenues, (ALL CAPS) but not all of them.

I wanted to get the look of the city maps like they are portrayed in the old travel guide books I have, but without drawing the city of Celora by hand. At first I considered taking photos of those guide book city maps and mixing and matching them. But most were too large scale. I then thought about using Google Maps instead, and so I used the satellite version of some of suburban London, just to create the texture of a city. I used screen shots of various locales, made them into tiles to fit in between the boulevards in with varying orientations so that they don't repeat too much. The map isn't really necessary to follow the story, it is just there to add a level of realism to Celora. And as I mentioned, maps are fun. 

A rainy evening in Celora

I hate to spoil stories so that I don't know what else I can say about this one, especially at this point, when, at the time this entry is posted, it had not been released. I do plan, however, to talk about the larger setting, in which most of my far future are set, so stay tuned!