Worldbuilding: The Greater World Of Rislandia

I want to call it the “greater world of Areth” or something different because Rislandia ends up being such a small corner of my steampunk world that it doesn’t make a lot of sense to call the world by that… but people know Rislandia by name from my award winning and #1 Bestselling steampunk series, the Adventures of Baron Von Monocle, so I’ll go with that for now.

Minor spoilers for the books ahead.

Book 2 is going to be dropping next week, and my primary focus for this book was to take Zaira and her airship crew off into an actual swashbuckling adventure, now that she’s got her feet wet with a little airship battle action and has a little experience.

For those not paying careful attention, it may seem like I pulled a continent out of left field for The Blood Of Giants and we were just going off on an adventure with no background… but that’s where you’re wrong, kiddo!

You’ll notice that there’s chapter headings in for steam and country which detail out Zaira’s fathers past adventures. They’re used to communicate the feel of the chapters that follow as Zaira is confined within the story to where the plot swept her to.

I wanted to have a much bigger world for grander adventures over time. For Steam And Country was Zaira’s coming of age. The Blood Of Giants is the first time where Zaira really takes the mantle of Baron Von Monocle and makes it her own. So where I didn’t want to bog down the plot with tons of world description, I left little hints — names, places, events, history, in the chapter headings, and in the stories the character Harkerpal told about Zaira’s fathers earlier adventures.

There were a lot of places mentioned in the first book, and eventually I had a map made which you can view here:

As you can see, Rislandia is a smalllll portion of this huge world. It’s in the center there in the southern hemisphere. The yellow on the map with the green wyranth empire just below it. We’ve only experienced a tiny, tiny portion of this epic world. There’s a lot of exploring for Zaira and us to do, and there’s lots of fantastic creatures and cool civilizations out there to explore as well.

Book 2 takes us to Zenwey, the big red continent in the north. It’s got a tropical southern portion followed by a huge desert that’s bigger than Rislandia as a whole, and then some brushlands to the north. This is where we’re going and where the fantastic happens — and Zenwey was mentioned as part of Zaira’s father’s travels in the first book for those who look carefully.

There’s a lot there that I’m building on what came before, and I’m excited to get you the first part of this next week. I try to use every detail I put into the book and make the worldbuilding that much richer and integral to the reader experience.

Now I just need someone to help me put together a wikipedia so all this information can be easily searchable…

If you haven’t checked out my steampunk world yet, now’s the time. The new book comes out next week. For Steam And Country is available in all formats including audio. Knight Training is a nice follow up and standalone if you want to check out my writing — that novella bridges the gap between books 1 and 2 (as there’s a little bit of a time jump involved). Catch up now. The fun’s about to begin in earnest in The Blood of Giants.