I’d done a lot of thinking, researching, and planning before I started writing The Tally Master. In fact I spent nearly two months on these preliminaries before I wrote the first scene of the novel.

I needed to know more about ingots, smithing in the Bronze Age, metals mining in same, and the organization of the armies of the ancients. But I spent almost as much time drawing the floor plans for the fortress in which Gael lived as I did researching.

Belzetarn is a vast complex, and I suspected I would get hopelessly confused unless I had a map!

Because I found the research (and the layout of the citadel) interesting, I shared a lot of the material on my blog. The links are below.

Gael’s Tally Chamber in Belzetarn
Mapping Ancient Rome onto Belzetarn
What Does the Tally Master Tally?
Map of the North-lands in the Bronze Age
The Fortress of Belzetarn
The Dark Tower
Belzetarn’s Smithies and Cellars
Belzetarn’s Formidable Entrance Gate
Belzetarn’s Treasures
Belzetarn’s Great Halls
Bronze Age Swords
Brother Kings