D. E. O. Smith
D.E.O. Smith was born and raised on the East Coast of the United States. Through a series of fortunate events, he was privileged to sail halfway around the globe and back, before landing in the Rocky Mountains with his wife and two small boys, where he indulges in his favorite hobby; having hobbies.
Writing
Gaea Undone Series
Shadowrain
When an altruistic bandit is betrayed by his oldest comrade and driven from the desert, he must put aside his cavalier ways and become the order he despises to discover a new strength desperately needed by the world—an ancient enemy of the six races has awoken, and the old magic is failing even the most practiced hands.
Firetide <In Progress>
Blood & Iron <In Progress>
Maps
GAEA (ˈgī·ə)
I like to begin stories with maps. When you can see the world from a bird’s eye view, the mind is drawn to not only points of interest, but the lives of the people who interact with them. Where do these people live? What do they want, where do they need to go, and why? What threats, opportunities, and obstacles will present themselves in the process, simply because of proximity? We are all, to some degree, products of our environment, and the societies in which we live are even more so. For myself, maps are a broad brush that help color relationships and conflict in organic, sometimes surprising ways.
Pencil and paper are my favorite tools for creating maps, though I like to experiment, and will occasionally remake maps in one computer graphics application or another. They all begin the same way, however; a drawing pad and an idea. These are a few of my maps.
HAMMAR (hä·ˈmär)
This is the first of this series of maps I created, and where the Gaea Undone series begins. This originally was just a sketch of some cities around a lake, but it grew and grew, until I decided to expand it into a full continent. This is the second version of the computer-drawn version of Hammar, the first one making less geographical sense to me. For this one, I scanned my own drawings to make custom brushes (for geographic features) and my handwriting to make a couple custom fonts. The majority of the work, including “ye olde sepia-tone,” was done in Adobe Photoshop, though some of the text was laid out in Illustrator. Once I drew it out, it became clear that “up is north” would be awkward for this continent’s shape, so I decided left would be north.
MARAJ (mär·ˈäj)
This is the one of my more recent maps, though the legend was drawn much later on a separate sheet of paper. Maraj is mostly desert, but there are many different biomes throughout the country. I wanted to make sure I captured this ecological variety, as well as the many oases (which would be critical in traveling across a large, hot desert). Maraj is also a bit north, so I opted to show the curvature of the parallels. My favorite part of this map? The mountains. I had fun drawing them, and I really like how they turned out.
