Landscapes of My Mind - Creating Fictional Settings

The round robin this month is a wonderful subject... creating fictional settings.

Creating fictional settings is one of my favourite things to do. I've always loved reading about landscapes of the mind- places that don't exist- so long as the author makes them seem as if they do. The whole concept has a long and grand history. Plato did it so convincingly that even two thousand years later some people choose to believe Atlantis once sank beneath the waves rather than rose from a Greek man’s imagination.

I've never invented any place as ambitious as Atlantis, but I've been creating my own settings for almost as long as I remember.

Back in the 1970s, I created a farming district I named Springford as a main setting for my first published book, a collection of linked stories called Her Kingdom for a Pony. I didn't use the real farming district in which I lived, because I wanted freedom to use features that didn't exist. Having developed a taste for it, I went on to create more and more places to populate what I might call My Australia. More than forty years later My Australia occupies a huge overlay of the east coast of the continent, lapping into the outback. There are several benefits to this habit. The most obvious is that I can invent features I want for my characters to visit and explore. The next is that once a place is invented, I can use it again as a repeated main setting or as a place my characters might refer to in passing. This helps to establish My Australia as real- at least in the context of my books.

Apart from Springford, which I used in a handful of stories in the 70s, 80s and 90s, I have Bandinangi, a town where the streets are named after stars and other celestial features. Bandinangi and the nearby town of Kissinhurst feature in the Bandinangi series which began with Five Easy Lessons and also in otherwise unrelated books such as The Magician's Box and Spiral Stairs. Bandinangi (pronounced with a hard G if you were wondering) is a town where the unexpected can easily happen and often does. If Nanna's hybrid potplant Venus the Vegetable Vampire is going to try to eat Lori's exerdances while Granny establishes a camel-trek business using Dad's credit card, Bandinangi is the place it will all go down. Meanwhile, Pop and his frenemy the Hungarian Irishman Villajicacki Broggen carry on their rivalry and Grandad pretends to be hard-of-hearing so people will leave him alone.

After ventures in Bandinangi, I became more ambitious and created the big sheep station Golden Lode, the haunted O'Connor's Leap on Ballahoo Station, and the very odd towns of Bridgeover and Sundown which exist in the Outback, a surreal place where time is fluid and a displaced Anzac encounters a young man of the future while colonial explorers set off on doomed expeditions and a young woman who died is somehow living contentedly again. I’ve only ever used this personified Outback in the one book. It feels almost too real to me, and it makes me uneasy.

On the other hand, I liked O'Connor's Leap so much that I have converted it to a national park and mentioned it in passing in much later and otherwise unconnected books. When young Vespers Klein goes climbing there, has he any idea it used to be home to a ghost?

In Trinity Street, the whole of Tasmania has become a national park, while in Translations of Celadon and Under the Waterfall I created complete new worlds- the pristine land of Celadon with its ruined city Cerulean and the very odd Sisteran where women most definitely have the upper hand. 

For Shadowdancers and its companion books I have a new world with countries such as Ankoor, cold, rocky and windswept, Rargon, a hot desert land and McAnerin, which is lush and green and dangerous.

For the Arkies series the new worlds the characters visit are planets rather than lands or worlds and yes, there is a difference. Drowned Planet, Planet of Fire and Fog Planet have proper designations, but the Arkies’ main concern is whether or not to pronounce them SR or Settlement Ready.

The Elydian Dawn series, which is one of my more ambitious creations, is set first on Greater Southern, a futuristic version of Oceana, and subsequently on the beautiful and terrifying planet of Elydia, named by the settlers after their crashed colony ship, Elysian Dawn.

Elydia welcomes settlers, kills many and loves the others so much it will never let them go.

To make any of these places seem real, I map them out in my mind and make copious notes to make sure I don't contradict myself. Fictional towns such as Bandinangi, Kissinhurst, Cockatoo and Noonan are planted in real parts of Australia, and, vegetable vampires, allergic cats, giant cabbages and the occasional witchy doppelganger (looking at you Slug-Pig and Roseblight Zebra-Hooves-Backwards) aside, they mostly conform to what one might expect of country Tasmania and inland Queensland and New South Wales.

When creating new lands and/or planets and/or worlds, the conforming is less obvious, but a desert is still a desert, and a windswept rocky island is still just that. For instance, none of my trees will ever bear wrapped sweets, pudding will never be dug out of the hillside (unless one of that Hungarian Irishman’s recipes has exploded, of course) and apples will never converse with the characters. Fictional and sometimes fantastical they are, but they are realistic within their own context. Even if we’re in the Kingdom, where Pearl the magical unicorn lives, apples still grow on trees and though plum buns might rain from the sky, that’s only because Pearl has made another glitch with her magic.

In any and all of my fantasy and/or sf settings, placenames have their internal patterns of logic, and features and vegetation and even wildlife is either partially or wholly created. For example, Rargon, the desert place where Shadowdancers is mainly set, has flutewood trees and sandfish. The former has hollow stems which store water, and the latter is a creature which lives under the sand conserving moisture. Ankoor has stargem mines, and its society is organised into castles, which act as clans and allegiances. In McAnerin, Allyso Tormblood and the Ankoorian spellhound Tace find and eat sweetloaves, which grow underground rather like yams or potatoes. The valuable reinbeast of Ankoor come in different coat-colours which determine their rarity...and so on. No fertile buck or pregnant doe is ever transferred, so the breeders control access absolutely.

Beautiful, lethal Elydia has vegetation and animal life with a silverish cast; the result of a mineral bound up in the whole ecology. In a case of adapt-or-die, anyone landing on the planet will take in this substance through food, water and even the air and most won't survive the violent transition process. Children born there will be just fine, because they take in the substance in utero. However, they will depend on it for the rest of their lives and removing them from the planet will kill them. Elydia has caustic seas, where leathery-skinned gas-whales swim, weird crystalline growths, fuzzy trees known as woolwoods, two-lobed fruits called kissing fruits and wide-leafed plants called pondcups. How did they get such logical names? They were bestowed by the teenaged settlers marooned on the planet. The little native heymice which love mushrooms and the frightening barrenscats get names in the same fashion.

When creating a fictional setting, I try to make the naming of places and features within it organic, so they match the mindset of the people who live there. Some of My Australia exists alongside the real world. For example, Annabel Falmouth, the heroine of O'Connor's Last Stand, flees the real Sydney and ends up at the fictional Ballahoo Station. 

Part of My Australia is a comparatively new venture which began in 2016 with a short story Fairy on the Christmas Tree. Frances Eckman lives in Sydney, in a suburb that doesn't exist close to one that does. In a later book, Annie works at a fitness centre in Milson's Point which is real, but lives for a time in Abigail Street, Gilchrist, which is not. Rue, the heroine of In Search of a Husband, is married in the Mount Coot-Tha Botanical Gardens and visits Broad Beach, which are real, before moving to Golden Lode, which is not.

For my historical novels set in Tasmania/Van Diemen's Land, Anna's Own and Heather and Heath, I adjusted the countryside to avoid running across problems such as a town being founded too late, or a mine closing at the wrong time. Therefore, I have Scotts Tier, Shepherd Town, and Mersey in place of Blue Tier, Deloraine and Chudleigh which really exist.

The parts of My Australia where I've been most active are Tasmania, Victoria and the area around Sydney which, not by coincidence, are the places I know best. In Tasmania, apart from the places just mentioned, I have Delmsford, build on the River Delm and Jellico Bay, a charming coastal town. In each of these I've established streets, businesses and houses. I could practically walk you through them to visit Jelly-and-Juice, the maritime museum, and Citron Parade which sounds much bigger than it is.  The town is named for the ship Jellico which went down in the 1800s. It was mastered by Richaud Citron, who founded Lemonwood Cottage and, so legend has it, planted a particularly evil and long-lived lemon tree and gooseberry bush which still thrive there. In the bay, rough topaz pebbles called jellico diamonds can sometimes be found.

Similarly, Delmsford has a pub called The Waybridge, founded by Cosmo Waybridge and currently run by his son-in-law Overton Kemble with his daughter Georgia. Kemble’s wife, Europa (nee Waybridge) Kemble, is an academic. Up the street is Treasures, built on a very large block by the Pearmain family, and currently inhabited by Raff and Anne Kettle. The convict-built bridge, constructed by Willum Quest in the 1830s, is considered a fine example of the stonemason's art. It harbours a rogue apple tree and some very odd frogs. The Turn Back Time arcade is home to some quite unusual shops, including Anne Hathaway's Yesterdays, and the town is host to the last remaining chapter of the Lilac Ladies, whose very elderly members have recently been joined by some fresh blood.

It's details such as these, I think, that help make fictional settings feel realistic and of course such settings, once established, grow organically. 

Apart from Gilchrist, my suburb in Sydney, I also have Windhill, which is near North Sydney. This one is home to Diamond Spellman Film Studios as well as the Fairy Gardens. Up the coast are Parson Bay, with a nearby rock formation called the Organ Pipe, then comes Dancing Tor and its tiny hamlet of Dancing Creek. North of that is Fiddle Bay, with Oakengrove, the big house and convention centre, the Belfry, home of the bakery business Queen of Tarts and Borrowdale Junction, commonly known as Borrow.

Down at Circular Quay (real) is the O-Quay Cafe (fictitious) where they once served liquorice bats and where Dove Larren and her friend Jagger Stein investigated their ancestors with help from the young barrista they dubbed Hans of Austria. Other fictitious cafes in Sydney include Der Kaffeetanz and The Island. There are also pubs called The King's Shilling and The Pear Tree and Wildwood Studio along with The Cobbler and Fairings, the little boutique which is weirdly difficult to find. If you drive down the coast a bit you can visit Delphinium Island where the Arts in Tune festivals are held. 

Down in Victoria, the town of Patterdale is in Gippsland. Patterdale is home to the Counterpoint Festival, and also to the Thymelines Gallery and the Over Here guesthouse. Close by is the Peckerdale-Green Tower and the Pride of Erin pub as well as Fee Kaffee the cafe and Recycled Sally's where Josefa McCord works. The nearest city is Appledore, where one might visit the Apple Crate. 

Running alongside these three chunks of My Australia is another reality known generally as over there, unless, of course, one happens to be there in which case it becomes over here while the human world is over there. 

You might term over there Fairyland, though the inhabitants would shrug off that term. As far as they're concerned, they're fay, but also people. Some of them, the ones who, in their parlance, can pass, come and go in the human world largely undetected. Some spend a year or so living human in our world, while others move here permanently…or have been here already for centuries. Others stay mostly on their side of the gateways, while a few can't come humanside at all. 

Over there is divided into districts, generally and casually known by common terms rather than set designations. The courtfolk mostly inhabit the courtlands, with an annex in the starpin on the Isle of Summer. The braefolk tend to live on Heather Isle or else in the braelands, while leprechauns inhabit the green way and the alpenfee prefer the alplands. The teg mostly stay in the valleys and the piskies on the pisky coast. The hobs farm the chalklands and the pixies usually live in the pixie forest. These peoples can, on the whole, pass, with the exception of the male leprechauns whose skin tone is green enough to get them a strange look if they venture humanside. Others, such as the sylvan, the waterfolk, the fisherfolk, the treefolk and the seafay stay in their homelands. They have little to do with humans, or with the mainstream fay either. Rarer folk such as herdfee, fijordfee, kanalfee and delftvolk can mostly pass but statistically there are not enough of them to matter.

Creating over there was a lot of fun. The main point, I found, was to remember that the inhabitants are people with their own customs and histories. They share a lot of culture with humans and before the industrial revolution there wasn't much difference in lifestyles. As one character put it, back in the day a couple of old friends might have a drink and a yarn at the inn, before parting company; one heading home to his village while the other stepped through a gateway to the chalklands. Since that point in history, the cultures have diverged, mainly because motors and electricity won’t work over there. A hob who teaches historical farming practices in one of our universities might have a mobile, but as soon as he steps through a gateway it will go inert. When he returns a week or a month later, it will wake with exactly the same battery charge as it had the moment he left. The people of over there still share some music and literature with us, so a folksinger at The Coffee Cup Ring Theatre might play Greensleeves at the same time as a courtfolk man in the castle over there is using the same tune to serenade his betrothed.

Having charge of the whole of over there has allowed me to claim enormous tracts of land, naming towns and natural features in much the same way I did with My Australia. Most of the placenames are descriptive. For example, the Fossmere is a pool with a waterfall and Pigeon Tor a rock formation where pigeons live. Île de Brume is a misty island where the rocky dwelling called Brumehoux Herregard was built centuries ago. Langskipland is an icy land to the far north and Auld Moongate is a cave on Moonstone Island, just out from Shimmerbay. Because over there is so big, (it take several months to sail from the pisky coast to Erin a’fee and even more to get to Manteau Island) I can set a story in any of the parts so far mapped in my mind, or in another part of the world entirely.

Although most of my fictional settings have been in Australia, over there or in other worlds/other planets, I have occasionally ventured elsewhere. Atonement is an island in the south seas. It supports towns called Desole and Dimanche, hinting at early settlers. I also have some little bits of the UK and France, with towns such as Cristal de Noël and Ville d'épines and the restaurant Fete des Fees near a ruined chateau, Stag St. Martins, an English blink-and-you’ll-miss-it village and Café Vouch-Safe which is on the corner of Swift Street and Scuttle Lane, in London. Then there are the Atland Islands in Scotland, which I used as a setting for Selka. I have quite an affection for some of these settings, but, aside from Atonement and My France (I don’t use that term, but it fits in with My Australia for the purposes of this post) which is my version of an area in Provence, I haven’t used them for long books or series. Messing about in France, a place I’ve never been, for example, is possible only because the towns and places I’ve created are my creations.  The more places I invent, the more detail I can add across books and series. For example, in Clear as Glass, Brierly Island, where Ellen Scheiber spends time as a reluctant bridesmaid to her cousin Saffy is a holiday resort which is off-season and unappealing because most of the activities are closed for the winter. The island also appears in Rachel Outward Bound which is set centuries in Ellen’s future. It is used as a repository for the candidates for the star ship Elysian Dawn as a place to keep them quarantined. Later still, it becomes home to the Rachel Foundation run by Harry Fejoa. Does it matter to Harry that Ellen visited there long ago? Of course not. He’ll never know. Does it matter to me? Absolutely! It gives my setting another layer of reality in its continuity. Rachel and Harry and their cohorts inhabit the old site of the resort which is thus a ready-made place for them to stay. Fast-forward a few hundred years and maybe the descendants of Harry’s goats will still be on the island. Maybe not. Maybe some archaeologist will discover the tanking system and wonder what it is. Meanwhile, on Elydia, the crashed starship will absolutely cause consternation and puzzlement for a young man named Domino as he wonders what on earth (or rather what on Elydia) the enormous silver outcrop portends. Would he return to Greater Southern if he could? Absolutely! Only…he can never leave his adopted home and might as well make the best of that anthropology degree he once thought so important.

Ah, but does all this deepening of settings within time as well as place matter to my readers? I have no idea. None of them has ever mentioned it. Have any of them noticed? Who knows? That would presuppose such a reader had read the Elydian Dawn series and the Old Friends and Fairy Tales series and thought about them in enough depth to notice that Brierly Island appears in both. By the way, I can’t recall why I named that island as I did. Perhaps it’s because of Bribie Island in Queensland, or the actor Richard Brierly who appeared as a nutter in one of the classic Doctor Who stories as well as in The Good Life.

In closing, keeping track of all these settings can be challenging. Therefore, I have my bible of 60,000 words or so devoted to place names, streets, businesses, terms and other non-character information. This covers a hundred or so of my books. Other bibles cover some of the others. I wish I’d thought of making them when I started writing, but who would have believed my imagined world would get so extensive? Certainly not me.

Here’s a small sample of the bible:

Shamrock Sailors: 1966. A film is which Pippin Pearmain played the Unseen Leprechaun (Performing Pippin Pearmain)

Shamrock stone: A green gem found on Bodhran Island and in other green way places. Pip has some in her clover charm. Tane says it doesn’t occur naturally Humanside, but that colleens often wear it in pins and brooches. (Performing Pippin Pearmain)

Shamrock Village: A large village on the Green Way, where Eileen o' the Mist, Kieran Shamrock and the rest of the family live. Includes a green, a great hall, Kieran's cottage, Eileen's cottage, the dairy/byre, the forge where Grainne and her man live, the shamrock banks and a clover meadow. Flori visits there with Gervais and Hamish. (Floribunda and the Best Men)

Shelta: The Piper’s name for a charming, tiny gold bird with a fan tail and starry eyes. One befriended Celene’s great-grandfather, though his wife never saw it. The Piper knows them, but his sister Ros has little luck with them. One takes to Robert Tanqueray. Aunt Ys believes in them, but has never seen one. Otherwise known as gilderbirds or gildies. (Tanqueray)

Sherringham Place: A fashion label that Dove Larren admired in her teens. (Old Friends and Fairy Tales series)

Shillelagh Grove: A leprechaun settlement where Lugh Traveller’s dad lives. (Being Tamzin 5)

Shimmerbay: A beach on Summer. Ancella and Emelie go there. (Tanqueray series)

Shirred Valance: a Sydney café in 2021. Mentioned in One Hundred Roses.

Shipley: A seaside township in Victoria, where Kerry Palmer and her human husband run a holiday camp called Fayhaven. Flower goes there for a while, as does Beattie. Yannick Langel spent time there in 2016/17 with Holly and Felix Palmer. (Just Eloped and Emer)

Shipley Light: The 1840s-built lighthouse at Shipley. The secret of the steps. No one has ever got an accurate count of the steps. There’s a good view from the top. Emer sees the light in an attack of the sight, and later Hazel stops the car there when driving Emer and Flower to Kerry’s. (Emer)

Ship Museum:  Not far from Diversity High, a block from Weatherby Station. Where Ada thought the school excursion was headed. (Being Tamzin 1)

 To visit the rest of the round robins...

Skye Taylor
Connie Vines
Belinda Edwards
Anne Stenhouse
Helena Fairfax
Sally Odgers   (me!)
Victoria Chatham
A.J. Dyer

 Bob Rich