I Traveled To My Book's Location For the First Time ~ RK Brainerd

I shared a bunch of this on Instagram, but I thought to share it here too. The last two weeks of June and the first week in July, I traveled through Spain and Galicia. This is exciting for writing reasons because the magical city in my Obsidian Divide fantasy series (called Farfalla) is located on the coast of Galicia.

I originally put this magical city here for purely geographical reasons. Due to alt-history/fantasy elements I wanted in my world-building, I needed a very west-ward spot out along the coast, and for that I just pulled out a map and pointed.

In a bizarre quirk of fate, it ended up the area was more perfect than I thought. There’s a big theme of independent communities, rebellion, and challenging societal restrictions throughout the series, and it turns out that Galicia has a long history of seeking independence from Spain. Not only that, but the weather is similar enough to my own place of residence that I don’t need to write too far outside my experience.

Anyway, I’m not the greatest writer of world-building, so that was that, and I kept writing.

Flash forward several years.

For reasons completely unrelated to writing, my mom and I had planned to walk the Camino de Santiago in summer 2020. But, well—2020 happened. Our trip postponed, we finally got a chance to go this past June.

It didn’t click for me until well into planning the trip that the Camino de Santiago goes into Galicia, and one of its pathways heads to the coast to basically where my magical city is set. Specifically, to Muxia and Finisterre (otherwise known as the end of the world by the Romans). So we made sure to build time to go visit while we were there, so I could actually visit the place I’ve set my city!

I can’t possible post all the pictures I took here, considering I took over a thousand. But I wanted to share a bunch of the ones that really struck me as magical.

Here’s some photos of our feet as we traveled through Galicia and Spain.

Two pairs of feet, one in black sneaks and the other in blue sneakers, stand next to a yellow arrow and seashell

Two pairs of bare feet submerged in crystal clear creek water

A pair of feet in black sneakers hangs out over the rock cliff, the dark blue ocean beyond

Two pairs of feet are propped up, heels in the ground, with the Santiago Cathedral in the background

My absolute favorite part was the magical pathways we walked through. They inspired me a lot.

Here are some highlights:

Of course there was the food, several which will be making an appearance in my books.

Pictured is padrón peppers with rock salt, Santiago (almond) cake + fruits + café licor, octopus, and tuna empanadas + vegetable soup!

On a wooden table sits brightly colored paper napkins and an assortment of fruit, along with a hand holding a small bottle of dark brown liquid

A curled octopus leg and several cut up pieces sit on a brown wooden plate

A few architectural highlights!

I love old buildings, and I was pretty much constantly in a state of awe of how much history greeted me everywhere.

A dark green rose bush with pale pink blooms crawls up the side of a tan and light grey stone house

An old paved road stretches forward between an old wooden fence leaning precariously and a tan-and-light-grey-stone house with a dark wooden door and plants growing out of the cracks

A clean stone street with bright yellow, grey, and reddish houses around it

Two bridges span the river, one older and made of big stone arches, the other of concrete and steel stretching the whole distance

A huge grape plant growing between the cobblestone stretching across a building wall made of rough grey and tan stone

A circular, stone building with a thatched roof, rolling green pastures in the distance with a bright blue sky and fluffy clouds

A grey stone castle with a modern steel door

From the top turret of a castle, looking down across a huge pasture and part of the castle, a hand resting on the wall in the lower right

An old, dark stone house sits built into a steel hill, surrounded by uneven stone walkways

Dark green grape plants grow across a lattice network in front of a white stucco house with a red roof

A narrow, perfectly rounded archway; beyond it, more archways, and a stone paved street with figures in the distance

Intricately sculpted stone buildings in a street in Santiago, the shadows of the buildings on one side of the narrow street casting across the buildings on the other side

an alleyway stretching into the distance, everything hued in yellow from the lamplight

Muros, a fishing village on the coast of Galicia, is made up of bright white and red buildings, archways, and nearly hundreds of bright boats sit bobbing in the water

Vines cover a huge dark grey stone archway spanning a cobblestone road, smaller white and red buildings beyond

Old stone bridge arching across three stone pillars embedded in a deep river, yellow and green plants growing from everything

Pyramid-shaped roman pillars sit in the middle of a river, a large stone bridge resting on top of them

A dark green labyrinth hedge sits in a stone-walled courtyard with white and red buildings in the background

From a high vantage point, looking across perhaps hundreds of red terra cotta rooftops in Santiago, Galicia

Of course, some landscape shots:

Bright pink heather grows at the side of a pathway filled with loose, jagged rocks

Old wooden fence sits before a green pasture, and in the distance, pale buildings scattered between dark trees with a larger mountain in the background and a thick cover of clouds

A green and brown pasture with cows lying down, before bunches of trees and bigger mountains in the background

A stack of smooth rocks sits in the foreground, the background dark green rolling hills with a blue sky beyond

Monte Pindo rises up behind crystal clear green-blue water and white sand beaches

Water streams down big granite rocks into a deep, dark blue pool with lapping waves

Dark mountains in the background, the foreground a smooth stone pathway with stone railings dotted with lamps

And just some final cool pictures

A gnarled tree stands in the middle of a circle of old stone buildings

Pink flowers lay under a thick net of spiderweb, the web converging into a tunnel between the flowers. Raindrops scatter across the web.

Ivy crawls up one side of an old metal gate; beyond, a meadow of grass and deciduous trees

Raindrops scattered across a frothy fern

Two slate stone sit on a table with an assortment of things, on stone the Norwegian compass, the other with the words: "come, come whoever you are, Wanderer, Worshipper, love of leaving. Ours is not a caravan of despair even if you have broken your vow one thousand times... come yet again. Come." - Rumi Sufi, poet

A dark slate stone hangs on a ran stone wall, with the words: "last night as I lay sleeping I dreamt -- marvelous error!-- that I had a beehive inside my heart and the golden bees were making white combs and sweet honey from my old failures" - antonio machede, Spanish poet

Okay… this is a lot! So I’m going to leave it there! But I hope you enjoyed a glimpse into my journey. If you’d like to check out more about the book that will be set here, with all of it’s magic and mayhem, check out my Jagged Emerald City page!

Until next time.