Being a writer is tough. That is simply what it comes down to. When I first got the idea to write a fiction story I was actually in a cathedral-type church in Cape May, NJ over Easter of 2010. I thought that I had an awesome idea about a scene where monks were holding the cathedral doors and someone...something was trying to break in. Cool idea right? This is actually the beginnings of the Order of Seraphil, except in that idea of them Brother Aiden was named Eliza Valdez (ironically) and she was a young girl coping with the problems of belonging to a faith that she did not necessarily believe in, it was because that was the only place she had to live. She was also the most skilled fighter in the abbey then. So I wrote the scene where "Eliza" was fighting in the practice yards and beating up on all of the other monks... suddenly the abbey was under attack by these ominous black demon monsters that were killing everything and taking over the abbey
I started talking to Ian about this and when I got back to Richmond I showed him what I had done. Of course, he skimmed through it and made positive remarks, as he always does. I quickly wrote a few more short stories of characters in different scenarios (the starts of our current characters) but after I read it over it a few days later I realized how awful it was. Ian then told me about the world he had built since middle school, that I had read over a few times when we were younger... That was the start of Twilight of an Empire and consequently the HierValan series.Then, over a few 40's of High Life (back when Ian used to drink... we are much more PRODUCTIVE now!) we sketched out the outline of the first novel.
The point here really is everyone has to start somewhere. Twilight of an Empire is now a 400+ page novel and we are querying agents... some even requested the manuscript and we are waiting to see if they fall in love with the story that we have spent years and years making. So, here let me introduce you to our main characters and their...modest... beginnings!
Andreos "Ghost" Eveas - a character that I created that was initially an assassin up for hire that had a special ability to bounce from shadow to shadow unseen. We wanted to make our story much more realistic so now he is Andreos, a young man who fell victim to the Azarians in the occupied city of Southgate, he has no powers but when they were taking the city they killed his adopted daughter, so he turned into an Azarian-killing machine that stalks the nights (think BATMAN!)
Raelan Valayre - He was actually Ian's character at the beginning, I am pretty sure that he was made much before we even thought of the book, but he was refined heavily after that. He is one of my favorite characters actually and he and Andreos are kind of sides of Ian and I... which makes their banter hilarious - in my opinion- and easy to write.
Aranar Krygan - Okay this was also Ian's character, and his first character really... and he is... well he is Ian in a nutshell. Extremely intelligent yet inwardly conflicted with himself as he over-thinks any given situation. He is another one of my favorite characters because he is just a kid really, thrown into this world where dark powers are at work and the bad guys are very real.
Eliza Valdez - Eliza was one of the most difficult characters to construct, not only because she is a young girl--something that I have never been-- but also because she is the victim of an abusive father. I had to research abuse victims and use my Justice Studies background to really find out how they acted. I struggled for a long, long while on how to present her thoughts and actions. I think I ended up pinpointing her character pretty well with the help of my girlfriend (who can obviously tell me much more of what is going on in a young girls mind) and research. We kind of gave Eliza an extremely difficult and dark childhood as possible, sometimes I actually felt cruel doing so... but she is just a character in a book... well that is what I kept telling myself, but she really came to life.
Silas Barrad- Silas was Ian's original evil anti-hero. We wanted to make someone more than just your average Darth Vader villain... so we made him a sociopath and we made him... well... insane. Which made for some fun writing. Also, he talks to his sword that he named Beauty, go figure.
All of our characters are roughly based off of Justin Byerly and all of his awesome personalities--just sayin'
(I'll update some more characters in my next post! We are going to do some blogs from our characters POV so, hopefully this gave you a little background on them!)
-Chris
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