Recently, a reader requested that I post the illustrations for The Awakened here on my blog, because they can be difficult to view on small eReader screens.  So, I thought I’d take this opportunity to give a little background on how the images came to be.

I used to work at a furniture manufacturing facility.  One day I snapped a few photos of a crumbling section of the concrete floor.  I scanned them into Photoshop and isolated the main shapes that would later become the Orudan Empire.  Then, I bought a floor tile from Home Depot that had some great textures and colors, like a satellite image of a continent with mountain ranges.  I scanned this in as well, then merged the two images.  I included the resulting map in earlier versions of my manuscript when I was seeking literary representation or having some editing done.