History of the map in Throne of Glass

Have you ever wondered how the map in Throne of Glass came to be? Yeah, no? Well I haven't. When I saw Erilea's map in the book, I waved it off as one of those extras that authors or publishers deem necessary to add in a book.

But no! It actually has a story, and an interesting one at that.

How the Erilea Map came to be (from Sarah's livejournal):
Stick-figure sketches from me. yay!

"So, several years ago (god, I don’t even know how many, but it feels like ages ago, perhaps before I was even published), I was approached by a long-time fan about making a map for THRONE OF GLASS.

Her name was Kelly, and she lived in Israel (HOW COOL, RIGHT?!), she’d read the first three TOG books on FictionPress, and also had a penchant for making epic fantasy/Tolkien-esque maps. …And then she offered to make a map for me. For free. For fun.

Obviously, I FREAKED, and sent her the horrible, embarrassing, totally unrealistic map I’d drawn of Erilea (the world of THRONE OF GLASS). A few weeks later, she sent me back a map that BLEW MY MIND. It was elegant and beautiful and made my world look cool and epic and—basically, it was everything I’d dreamed it’d be.

Flash forward a few years—to this past winter/spring, actually. I got an email from Bloomsbury, asking if I had a map (however vague/awful it might be) of the world of THRONE OF GLASS that they could send to a map designer/artist (they were in the process of looking for one).

My response? “OH HELL YES I HAVE A MAP THAT YOU COULD SHOW A DESIGNER.” (Obviously, I answered a bit more gracefully than that.)

So, I sent them the map that Kelly had drawn.

And they were so impressed and amazed by Kelly’s map that they wrote back, asking if I thought Kelly might be interested in designing the official map for the book.

Anddd I basically told them that if it were possible to hire Kelly, then having a FictionPress fan design the map for THRONE OF GLASS would be the coolest thing EVER."

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