Yes, it’s one last character spotlight in honor of this week’s FREE PROMO OF The Crimson League, the Fight for Hope. (Download it here for Kindle, for FREE).

No, Kansten Carder’s not really a badger.

Yes, she’s having more of an impact on readers than I really expected, which I’m loving.

Kansten is a twenty-five year old woman who grew up outside the farm village of Granharson. She blonde, a morning person, bold and loyal to a fault, and a classic choleric by temperament.

She does NOT like taking orders, which causes friction, because she is neither one of the leaders nor one of the nobles in the Crimson League.

She gripes a LOT. She’s always convinced her own ideas are best, and she’ll tell you so. She’s moody. (She gets that from me).

But she has a heart of GOLD.

I have had two people, within the span of 24 hours, recently tell me that one of the most powerful moments in my book involves Kansten and the connection they felt with her.

This makes me so happy. Kansten wasn’t an easy character to write. That’s to say, it would be easy to make her unlikeable and unsympathic, especially seeing she isn’t the point of view character, so you don’t always get her side of things.

This feedback regarding her shows me I nailed what I was hoping to achieve with her: show her difficulties and flaws while also highlighting that she has good intentions and good will.

Kansten isn’t unwilling to admit it when she realizes she actually is wrong. And honestly, I sometimes wish I could be a bit brasher, a bit more assertive, like she is. I err far too often on the other side of that spectrum.

One of my favorite aspects of her is that she is fierce–like a badger. She truly is a lovable badger. She is fiercely protective of the people she cares about, especially Bennie and Kora.

She has no sense of entitlement, and she’d never claim to be owed anything more than the opportunity to prove herself. But she does, I’d say, demand that.

I love Kansten because she is deeply flawed and yet deeply beautiful–like all of us.

Make sure you download the Kindle version of The Crimson League: The Fight for Hope while it’s free! And let me know what you think about Kansten (or other characters) in your review, if you’d like!