I have one thing in common with the late, great author Terry Pratchett.
In my copy of his first Discworld novel, The Color of Magic, there’s a foreword where he describes his approach to his signature fantasy setting. He says something like, “this is not a coherent fantasy world, the chronology is funny, and there is no map.”
The world of Dominic Deegan is somewhat similar to Discworld in that regard, except I hope it’s at least a little coherent. When I began the Oracle for Hire years over twenty years ago I wasn’t bringing a long-written, detailed, planned fantasy setting to life; I was making comics of my Dungeons & Dragons character to keep myself artistically sane while I worked retail and waited tables. The world literally began with Dominic and Spark, and I slowly built it around them as I needed it.
This may be heretical of me to say as a fantasy creator, but I loathe maps. I have no use for them. I find them too limiting, too constricting to where I need a story to go and where I need characters to be to fit the narrative. A map with definitively measured distances makes my brain have to consider logistics that would only serve to distract me. Terry Pratchett said of Discworld’s lack of a map, “you can’t map a sense of humor,” and for me the world of Dominic Deegan is the same, except it’s the entirety of my imagination. I want to add more to the world as I need it, not consult a cartographer.
So there has never been a map for anywhere in this world, and there never will be.*
*okay there’s one map of the Winter Archipelago for The Lore of Dominic Deegan patrons of my Patreon but that’s all
Unlike Discworld, and most other fantasy settings, the world of Dominic Deegan doesn’t have a name. To this day, after all this time, I still have no idea what Dominic’s world is called. I’ve tried to sit down and commit to one but it has never come to me. Like mapping out my imagination, I don’t think I can settle on one name for a place and a cast that’s come to represent who I am as a storyteller and where I am in life at the time I am telling these stories. So, instead of caving to the pressures of tradition, I believe Dominic’s world will remain unnamed.
I regret I will never meet Terry Pratchett, nor will I ever receive his many accolades (including knighthood), but having this small thing in common with one of the all-time greats makes me think I’m doing something right.