James Preller's Blog

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I’ve posted about this previously, but to quickly catch you up: Every book in my new middle-grade wilderness adventure series, THE SURVIVAL CODE, will feature a map. The first two books, Wildfire Rescue and Snow Blind, are coming out in Spring, 2027. Two more titles are coming in 2028. And beyond that? Complete & total world domination!

There are my first books with maps and I’m pretty thrilled about it. Just a cool milestone. 

After I handed in the manuscript, my editor asked if I could pass along a rough sketch of a map. So I gave him this thing of beauty:

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Basically, the things are in the right place. But: Yikes!

Fortunately, a highly skilled illustrator, Molly Fehr, who specializes in this sort of thing, took over from there. (Note: Vivienne To is doing all the rest of the interior illustrations, and she’s insanely talented in her own right.)

After some minor back and forth, Molly arrived at this: 

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Okay, I’ll admit it. This is an improvement.

THANK YOU, MOLLY!