It’s map time! For all you world builders out there, a fun, fantasy map is a must, I think. Given the state of applications today, un-artistic idiots, like me, can make a pretty decent map at little expense.

If you google “fantasy map generators,” you will see many options. Let me direct you to  the article 16 Best Fantasy Map Generator Tools: A New Tool by Shannon Clark. This piece is less than a year old but may be a little dated. Some of the generators she lists are free or have a free version. Many of these were developed with gamers in mind but can be used for illustrations as well.

I settled on Wonderdraft, largely for its intuitive nature and the modest price of $30. The program is downloaded and installed on your computer, as opposed to being in the Cloud. It comes with a large array of images (mountains, trees, buildings), but more can be purchased.

The program starts off by having you select a background (the sea) along with some other parameters, and then you plop in a land mass. There are a limited number of choices for the background and the texture of the land mass, but you can change the colors, intensity, and shapes. There is a manual plus tutorials. Here is a tutorial I found useful for getting started.

My other approach to learning Wonderdraft was to play with all the options and delete the out-of-control results. Rather much fun.

Returning to my mention last month about my failure to promote my freebie, Stories and Poems of Trueterra, on promotional sites, I now slap myself for forgetting about Story Origin. It is a very different model from the usual promotional sites. Rather than you paying them to put you in their email newsletter and list you on their website, Story Origin is a community of authors cross-promoting each other. It is $10 a month, and you have access to join small groups of authors in a particular genré and/or sub-genré who are cross-promoting the authors in their group in their newsletter (in my case, my blog) during a campaign period (usually a month).

There are various categories of campaigns, such as Sale, Reviews, and Kindle Unlimited.The category I entered was in four Giveaway campaigns, and they never asked for an ASIN number, which my giveaway does not have but other promotional sites insisted upon.

I will encourage you to visit these four campaign sites in September’s blog. Hey, free books in exchange for your email! You can always unsubscribe.

Also in September, I will be offering you a free ebook copy of my sequel to A Vacant Throne, which is Sword of Trueterra, in the hope you will review it on Amazon before my official launch date.

I will explain in September, in more detail, how I have set this all up for myself.