- Mar 25
- 4 min read
With a new book based in the Magiford world coming soon I figured it was a great time to share some basic worldbuilding info. (If you are from the USA Midwest you probably know all this already.)
My fictional city of Magiford is located in the South Eastern part of the state of Wisconsin - see the pink star in the map below. This is where the majority of the Magiford books take place.
The fictional city of Timber Ridge is located in Northern Wisconsin, and although I haven't picked an exact spot for it I would say it is probably located somewhere near the word "Wisconsin" in the map below.
The new book, Managing the Vampire's Mansion, will be based in a REAL LIFE town called Algoma. This town is located along the shore of Lake Michigan (East of the "N" in Wisconsin in the map below).
Wisconsin is one of the States that gets very distinctive weather changes for each season. Lots of pretty flowering trees and plants in the spring, warm (and potentially very hot) & humid summers, and fantastically beautiful falls with lots of leaf color variations.
And then there is winter...
Yes, Wisconsin has some pretty intense winters. But we actually have more extreme cold than extreme snow. As you can see from the snowfall map below the North Eastern part of the USA gets way more snow then most of Wisconsin.
Versus when you look at this average temperature map (for winter) you can see that even Southern Wisconsin is much colder then most of the North East.
Wisconsin Accents
Another map I want to share shows off how the accents differ throughout Wisconsin:
Most of the people of Wisconsin lives in the Southern part of the State because that is where the most populated cities are located. This means that most of the population have a Inland North accent which has strong nasal tones with rounded out consonants and dragged out vowels.
However, as you can see in the accent map above, the accent changes as you move into Northern Wisconsin. Wisconsin "famous" sayings like “Dat”, “Ope”, “Yous guys”, “Yah der hey” are all North-Central accent characteristics. (Although admittedly their use has leaked over into the Southern part of the state, especially since it's not uncommon for people who were born and raised in the Northern part of the state to move South for work.)
The North Central accent gets more exaggerated as you move farther North and the part of Wisconsin near Minnesota typically speaks with the Minnesota variation of the accent.
I specifically wanted to mention this because Kira Fixx, the female narrator for the Pack of Dawn and Destiny series correctly captured this change. She uses a neutral accent for the majority of the series but for voicing Alpha Dale and Alpha Tom in the third book she pulled out REALLY heavy North-Central Wisconsin versus Minnesota accents for the two of them. I burst out laughing the first time I heard it because it was so perfect!
Magiford Maps?
I don't have an official map of Magiford and I don't have any plans to make one. But when I described the downtown Magiford area as squeezed between two lakes I was picturing the real life Wisconsin cities of Lake Geneva and Madison. I recommend using Google maps to look at both of those places if you would like a general idea of what downtown Magiford might be like.
Lake Michigan
One final thing I want to bring up is Lake Michigan, especially because the new book takes places in a town along Lake Michigan!
Lake Michigan is the giant freshwater lake that is all along the East side of Wisconsin. It is impossible for me to adequately explain just how big this lake is, and if you haven't visited a water body of this size it is probably impossible for you to comprehend. I'll share some general info below but you should really lookup photos of it if you are trying to get a reference for the scenes described in the new book.
Lake Michigan is the second largest lake in the Great Lakes (after Lake Superior).
The main part of the lake is anywhere from 90 to 118 miles wide so NO you can't see across it.
Fishing and boating on Lake Michigan is very popular but the waves can get wild!
The lake is big enough to impact the weather! It keeps the shore of Wisconsin warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer compared to the rest of the state.
It also creates "lake effect snow" where it juices up existing snow storms because the storms pick up water vapor from the lake. This can impact Wisconsin cities but most of this snow gets dumped on the Western part of Michigan. And if you scroll up and look at the snow map again you will see that the Western part of Michigan gets more snow than the places around it.
If you enjoyed this real life worldbuilding explanation you should also read my blog post about the most famous gas station franchise in Wisconsin: Kwik Trip.
