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« on: May 04, 2004, 12:13:12 AM »
This is fabulous stuff, MB. I am a nut for maps. When Beth Massie and I were writing Dreams of the Dark, I drew a very detailed map -- similar in scale and detail to this one, by the way -- of Collinsport and Collinwood as I envisioned them, and this is what we worked from when dealing with any sort of geography in the book. Collinsport, in our version, was, in fact, at the easternmost edge of Hancock County (actually a fictitious corner of the existing county), not far from the mouth of the Narraguagus River.
I provided the map to HarperCollins when we submitted the book, although they opted not to use it (would've been neat if they had).
There are a lot of similarities in our map to the Oddsson map; Collinwood is south of Collinsport, on a very similar peninsula; Eagle Hill is placed in an almost identical position; U.S. Hwy. 1 Alt is also almost identically placed. The description of the drive to Collinwood in Dreams mentions this specifically.
There are some significant differences. One is that the front and back sides of the house are pretty much reversed and, in my version, Widows Hill is to the north of the mansion. My reason for this is that, assuming Widows Hill actually faces roughly east, views in the show would suggest that the house is to the south of the cliffs. And from Widows Hill, Collinsport can be seen in the distance, and Collinwood appears to be in the opposite direction. The Old House in my version is also to the north; about where Hatter's Cove is shown on the Oddsson map.
The grounds of Collinwood on my map closely parallel the Lyndhurst estate, except that it is expanded by a factor of approximately three. In the early chapters of Dreams, I mentioned a distant suspension bridge, which would roughly equate to the positioning of the Tappan Zee Bridge (ostensibly a bridge for Hwy 1A).
I don't know if I'll be able to find a copy of the map I made; if so, I'll try to scan it and post it.