Cartographer's Notes on the Heart of a House

For as long as anyone can remember, humanity has lived in the Grand House. To most, she is a god: the force that grows buildings and shapes hallways, the force that fills pools with drinking water and vents with clean air, the force that magical Architects tap into when they draw structures into existence. To others, the House’s occasional development of warped and inhospitable architecture signals something far more sinister.

For the Cartographer—an asocial wanderer who has been charting the many landscapes of their home for years—the House is a site of spiritual fulfillment, and also a challenge. Legends speak of the lower levels, a vast area deep below that no one has visited in living memory. Beyond that lies the mysterious Core, the holiest place in the world, said to be the source of the House’s power.

With the help of their sometime-friend, sometime-rival—a strange, teleporting being known as the Porter—the Cartographer is going to make it to the heart of the House, no matter what they might find in her depths.

See also: Art of Cartographer's Notes

Cartographer's Notes—hereafter Cartnotes—is a novel that I have very very slowly been writing since 2020. It will probably take a while for it to be completed, but (unlike most of my other long projects) I feel confident in saying that it will one day be completed.

I'll periodically put more information up when I feel like it. I don't want to say too much... but at the same time, I have a lot I could say!

You might enjoy Cartnotes if you like House of Leaves or the Backrooms webseries, though the inspiration for the project came primarily from the podcast The Magnus Archives, the manga Uzumaki, and the novel Annihilation. Funnily enough, I started developing the story before the Backrooms really took off on my sphere of the internet, though it's always shared some DNA with the "liminal spaces" online horror trend.

Despite the fact that literally everything listed above arguably falls within the horror genre, I'm not sure if I would call Cartnotes horror. Somewhere else I described it as "a slow-paced fantasy adventure novel with elements of horror and romance." That seems about right.

Again, I'm not sure what else I should say here on this topic—Cartnotes is something I've been working on for so long on my own that sharing it in any way feels strange to me. I'm happy to answer questions if anyone's interested, though.