The World of Carnillo

How Dad brought the world in my head to life in his sketchbooks

One of several versions of the ficticious city of Carnillo Dad magicked into being when working on illustrations for The Battle for Carnillo.

As a child, I loved reading books set in fantastical worlds. Narnia was, of course, a favourite place I’d visit in my imagination long after I’d closed one of the novels set there. The world beyond the back of the closet was so fully realized it wasn’t hard to see myself chatting with Mr. Tumnus under the streetlight, flakes of snow falling around us.

Dad also loved to get lost in a good fantasy novel, so when I started work on the second title in my own series of fantasy novels and asked if he would do some drawings for possible inclusion - well, he threw himself into the project.

I provided him with a list of some ideas and then he created his own derivative list of what caught his fancy and then he started drawing.

There were lots of street scenes from various perspectives as well as a number of drawings of barges and canals.

Here’s one of the drawings that wound up in the book.

I believe there was a scene that involved an apothecary with cut flowers and herbs hanging up to dry (it’s been a long time since I looked at these books - I have only the fuzziest memory of what’s in them… ) and he did many versions of the bottles, jars, and various drying plants one might find in such an establishment…

In much the same way as I have always been able to write anywhere, Dad didn’t necessarily wait until he had a good sketchbook and his favourite pen before starting to draw. I found this in his Carnillo file:

On the back?

His working drawings are a glimpse into the way he developed his ideas - lots of little sketches…

… some of which he then developed further:

… perhaps exploring in pen and ink or gouache:

Throughout this process, he’d read drafts of new chapters and we’d talk about how I imagined things might look and then he would show me his ideas as he shaped them into completed drawings.

Here’s how the final version of Carnillo appeared in the book…

One of my favourite presents from Dad is this version of the city, which sits on a shelf opposite my desk where I can look up and see it:

What makes the fictional Carnillo one of my favourites is that Dad and I both used the real-world city of Aigues-Mortes (in the south of France) as our starting place. We were fortunate enough to visit twice - once in 2000 and again in 2019. Though nearly 20 years had passed, Dad and I found our way around the ancient streets as if no time had passed at all.

I took this photo of Dad during our 2019 trip to Aiges-Mortes. We had just finished a long amble through the narrow, winding streets and had stopped to share a plate of French fries and a couple of lattés. After thumbing through the guide book (you can see it there on the table), Dad pulled out his sketch book to start drawing and I scribbled away in my journal. There are few things either of us enjoyed doing more than spending time in each other’s company recording our days, each in our own way.

As for that fantasy trilogy - only the first two titles were ever published. The third manuscript remains unfinished.** The publisher (Sono Nis Press) shifted focus before we were able to finishe the series and then, in a horrible twist of fate, suffered a devastating fire, which destroyed the company’s offices and warehouse.

The first two titles (Cave of Departure and The Battle for Carnillo) are now out of print, so I doubt the third installment will ever see the light of day. What remains are a handful of copies and a file folder full of drawings of a world in which my father and I spent some memorable times together.

**If you ever want a way to piss off your readers for DECADES, write the first two volumes of a trilogy and end Book Two with a cliffhanger. I STILL get emails occasionally, though they have now shifted to saying things like, “I would have read this to my kids except YOU NEVER FINISHED THE STORY!!”**