(bell dings) upbeat music - My name is Peng Shepherd, and this is "The Cartographers."

The cartographers, they're a group of seven friends, and they are responsible for discovering the map that the book is about.

And they also discover the secret that's on it.

It ends up just kind of tearing the friends apart.

30 years later, Nell, who's the main character, she discovers that map, and then has to kind of go on a like a little bit of a scavenger hunt to find each of these seven cartographers and find out what they know.

- If I was a teenager and I had read this book, I would've immediately aligned my course to study cartography.

(Peng laughs) It just was, it's so fascinating.

How did you come to be interested in maps?

- I think I was also that teen too, you know, who just love them for as long as... You know, when you're young and you just live in your hometown, you're not old enough to start traveling yet by yourself 'cause you're just a kid, and so maps are the way that you start exploring the world kind of.

And, you know, you get, you pick up an atlas and you look at this country that you've never been to and you read the names of the places, and, you know, follow where the roads go.

And it just felt kind of like magic.

It really felt like magic at that age.

And I just never lost that love for it, you know.

Even now that I am older and I can travel on my own, maps still feel like almost like a book in a way.

When you open it up and you feel like you're gonna get told a different kind of story, but still a story.

(gentle music) - [J.T.Ellison] Where did the idea for this book come from?

- There is this somewhat obscure cartography term, phantom settlement.

And what it means essentially is an error that's on a map, but it's not a mistake, it's an intentional error.

And cartographers of old used to put phantom settlements on their maps kind of as a way to protect their work because since it's an intentional error that's hidden in a map, if that error turns up on someone else's work, the only way it could be there is if they copied yours.

I ended up discovering so many maps that have their own phantom settlements on them from the real world.

There were probably, I don't know, 30 pictures of maps that I wanted to include.

And my editor was like, "Okay, we can't have 30 maps."

And there's this tiny map, it's a highway, you know, a folding driving map of the highways.

It's from the early 1920s.

And it became a little bit famous because there was an error that was put on that map that kind of became real.

I couldn't stop thinking about what more could happen with that?

You know, that error, that secret.

Like what if it became real?

(gentle music) - Felix's opening scene at Haberson, just, is it Haberson or Haberson?

- Well, I say Haberson.

You can say Haberson, yeah.

- Haberson.

Okay.

They're doing the plotting and the geocoding and everything, and it's like, it's almost like a video game that they're trying to lay all this stuff stuff in and they're actually plotting a map.

And I just found that absolutely fascinating.

How is Haberson map like Google?

- It's like Google in that it's very, because it's an algorithm essentially, and it's a very advanced algorithm, so it's very, very smart in some ways, but it's not very wise in other ways.

And so what I was trying to do with the Haberson map was show what you, kind of the dangers of having so much intelligence, but not a lot of wisdom, because there wasn't a human behind it to kind of steer it in the right direction.

So there's this farm in the middle of Kansas, and a couple years ago people started showing up asking for weird things.

Like they were insisting that their lost dog was there or like their iPhone had been stolen and that's where it was.

And even like bounty hunters were turning up saying that their fugitive was there.

And it turns out whenever GPS or the internet doesn't know the specific location of something, it defaults to the exact geographic center of the United States, and that farm happens to be the exact geographic center.

- No kidding.

- Yeah.

And so for years it was this mystery.

They had no idea why all these people kept coming to them insisting that whatever they had lost was there.

And it wasn't until they'd hired a private investigator, and he went through all the, you know, but that was really the inspiration for Haberson I think, something that was so intelligent, but not wise.

(gentle music) - [J.T.Ellison] Nell's really interesting because she loses her job at the, her dream job, right?

- Yeah.

- The job that she's always wanted at the Map Division of the New York Public Library.

Why that particular library and why that particular Map Division?

- It's a place that's really near and dear to my heart.

So I used to live in New York City, and I had just moved away when I started writing this book.

But I spent, I mean, I don't know how many afternoons in the New York Public Library and the Map Division that I mentioned in the book is a real division in the New York Public Library.

And they really do have I think about half a million sheet maps in their archives.

- Amazing.

- And anybody can just go into the library and ask to see any of the maps, and they'll bring it out for you, and it's just this incredible resource.

- Can you give us a quick run through of how maps have changed over the years?

- In the very beginning, maps were an entirely, you know, manual artistic thing.

And in ancient times there were very few people who could read, you know, and so map makers were a very special category, but also so were map readers, you know, people who could use maps, because you had to be able to read to use a map.

And slowly as more people, you know, learned to read, maps became more widespread and common and, you know, more people could own them and use them.

And that's really the height at which the true story that I referred to where some map makers were stealing each other's work because it became easier than ever to copy work.

And there was, you know, so much demand for people to own maps.

And then in, I think, 1990, that was when GPS was created and that changed everything.

(gentle music) - All books have tropes.

- Yes.

- And you have one of my favorites in this, which is found family.

Did you plan that going into it or did the characters just decide, "Hey, we're gonna hang out together"?

- Yes, they decided.

No, I planned nothing.

It really was a process of discovery for me.

And I didn't know that there would be these two groups, kind of separated across time, but coming back together, and it was really, that was really the heart of it for me.

And when I found these two groups and realized that they had been torn apart by a terrible secret, one 30 years before the second group discovers the same secret.

It wasn't until I found both of them that I realized like, "Oh this is where the book is going."

- You notice I'm dancing around the plot.

- Yes.

- This is a very difficult book to talk about without giving away such incredibly neat, cool things.

And I will tell you, I'm both mad at you and happy because I really thought I was going in a certain direction.

I had, I was convinced, actually.

And I was telling my dad, I'm like, "This is what's gonna happen.

It's gonna be so cool."

And you didn't do it.

- I went a different way.

- You went, I mean, it's a totally different plot.

It has elements of what I thought was gonna happen, but not.

- Yeah.

- So I was shocked, which I'm thrilled, I'm very happy with that because it's so hard to surprise people anymore.

Especially readers, especially writers who read.

- Yeah.

- But I also, you know, thank you, 'cause now I have an idea that you didn't use.

(both laughing) - Oh, you're welcome.

- I am stealing it.

(gentle music) In the description, when I picked this up, it mentions that this is really good for fans of V. E. Schwab.

I saw that and I went, "Ooh, it's gonna be magic."

- Heck yeah.

- It's gonna be magic.

And it is a very magical story.

But it kind of defies genres.

So how do you describe this?

- I think I would call it a dark academia fantasy maybe.

Or maybe a mystery fantasy I think.

Because there definitely is some magic in it, but it's kind of pulling from more than just the fantasy genre.

I grew up reading science fiction and fantasy.

It's my love, my home.

And so I always knew that that was what I wanted to write like, you know.

And then when I was in my later 20s, I went to an MFA program and that was where I really got exposed to much more literary fiction than I was used to reading.

And I think it had a really positive influence on me 'cause I kind of landed somewhere in the middle where, you know, like crossing back and forth between them or incorporating both.

And it's just, I just love it.

- What's your biggest challenge writing this story?

What really kind of tripped you up?

- I'm a pantser, to use the plotter versus pantser.

I'm a total pantser.

So when I start a book, I don't have any plans.

I have no outline, I have no notes.

And I think, because this one was a mystery, you kind of need a plan, you know, because there's- - Sort of.

- Yeah.

And so it took me a really long time to find the plan because I could only find it by writing through it rather than making an outline.

So it was a lot, a lot of pages.

- Did you know where it was going though?

Did you know what the end result was?

- Yes, I did know the end, but I had no idea how I was gonna gonna get there.

I had no idea what characters were gonna get there.

- I'm a pantser and I don't know the end.

- Oh.

wow.

- So I'm always just kind of writing through.

I've actually been, you know, like 110,000 in and not known who the killer is, not know what the resolution is.

- This makes me feel better about my process.

- Yeah.

Thank you so much.

- Thank you.

- This has this been so delightful.

I'm really excited for all the success for the book.

I hope it continues being awesome for you.

- Oh, thank you.

Thank you.

And it was an honor to be here.

- And thank you for watching "A Word on Words."

I'm J.T.

Ellison, keep reading.

(upbeat music) - [Peng Shepherd] When I start a book, I don't have any plans.

I have no outline, I have no notes.

And I think, because this one was a mystery, you kind of need a plan.