H is for Hattan #atoz2025 #booksky

Week 2 of the A to Z Challenge and I’m continuing the illustration theme, struggling for an H, but settled on Castle Hattan. I’d normally give you flash fiction today, so I might give you a short excerpt too.

My ten Princelings books and the two for younger readers, Messenger Misadventures and Cavies of Flexford Common all have illustrations. Most are chapter headings. Cavies is designed for younger readers (c 7 yrs old, Key Stage 1 in UK educational parlance). That has illustrations throughout.

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The A to Z is a blog hop, so do go to other people who are doing it. You can find the links here.

Castle Hattan: the home of Mariusz, or is it Hugo?

As I mentioned yesterday, I made Hugo the villain of the series in book 1, but he isn’t really – he just has a different focus from everyone else. Just trying to get a product into a new market, with a twist. So in book 4, The Traveler in Black and White, he gets to tell his story about how he discovered the Realms. He’s not from there. The clue is Hattan and the fact that Traveler is spelt with one L.

Hattan is a high tower. George visits it in book 1 and has fun with a clever system of pulleys and ropes they use to get up and down. The system stores and releases energy as it works. This view, of the sky courtyard, gives you a good idea of the island it’s on, and the waterways that lead out to the sea. But there’s no Verrazano Narrows bridge in Hugo’s world 🙂

A Piece of the Action

Hugo is really Lord Mariusz of Hattan, but he uses Hugo as an alias when he’s in the Realms, and that’s how we initially meet him. He crops up in several of the books, and is probably mentioned in more. He narrates book 4, in his own Humphrey Bogart-like style. This is how it starts…

It was a long steamy August day, and I was stretched out on the silk sheet that the Rajah had given me in India to seal our agreement on the rights to produce Wozna Cola over there. It was cool in my apartment, well, if you could call anything cool with the dial topping 100 outside. The water dripped over the stones just like the Rajah’d showed me, and I felt a slight shift in the air as someone entered through the fly screen.

“My lord,” came a squeaky voice that I knew would be Squeak. We called him that for obvious reasons, and however hard he tried to change his voice, it still came out as a squeak. I beckoned him over. “There’s something strange in the courtyard, sire,” he said.

I didn’t much like being called “sire”. It seemed to hark back to the olden days of knights and things. I thought we were past all that, here in the great city of Hattan with its shining towers and modern technology that had made my dad’s fortune. Mine too, come to think of it. I stretched a little and said “What” in a lazy sort of way.

“You’d better come and see, sire,” was all he said.

The Traveler in Black and White, Chapter 1. Jemima Pett (c) 2013

The Illustrations

Despite Mariusz/Hugo having a book of his own, there aren’t that many illustrations of Castle Hattan. Most are centred on the sky courtyard, and the internal ones are often not very good. But here are some I think you’ll enjoy.

The top left is the original drawing of the sky courtyard, and I think I printed a second copy and changed it to the sunset picture of bottom left. I went back to the original and updated it for the last book (main picture) on the iPad. The middle top is the brewery, or cola manufactory, which is what Hattan does. It brews and sells a type of cola called Wozna. Mariusz relates the history to somebody while someone else gets up to mischief (I think Victor, who goes to visit Saku in his cola lair).

Mariusz, Saku, Willoughby, and a few other minor characters in later books, were all real-life guinea pigs in Manhattan. They lived with a friend who encouraged me with the books.

The top right is a view of the other side of the courtyard, with towers at either corner, and a strange tunnel in the middle. Last time we see it, it is used for storing cold drinks. Bottom left is Lord Mariusz’s ‘salon’. I thought it should have lots of souvenirs from his own travels, and gifts from even more exotic places from some of his contacts. The Zulu spears are imaginary, but I do have the shadow puppets!

I start by using pencil (Derwent Cassell HB or 2B) on paper. Then I use an inkpen over to create the line drawing (I have a set of three Pilot Drawing pens, nos 01, 03, and 05). After that, I usually erase the pencil. By book 9 I was doing all my illustrations on the iPad, and I could take a JPEG copy of a hand-drawn castle, and amend it, or change it about a bit, rather than start from scratch.

All were done in the same way. These come from books 1. The Princelings of the East, and 4 the Traveler in Black and White, and 10. Princelings Revolution. Traveler is a good place to start for people who want to skip the first three, for some reason. Mariusz is charming. Everybody says so. He has his own ideas of what is ethical, though.

I’m Jemima Pett, author, blogger, illustrator and guinea pig wrangler. My interests are in fantasy, environment, science (inc. fiction) and thrillers, to name a few things. This is my nth AtoZ Challenge. Mostly I talk about books. This time I’m talking about something I do without much thinking about… my illustrations.