Category: Character Spotlights

• May 15, 2024

  Character Spotlight: Prince Valkin the Bold

  I really enjoy writing kids as characters. The Crimson League featured Zacry as a boy. Now we have multiple kids in The Magic Council–principally the three princes (pun fully intended). Valkin is Herezoth’s crown prince. At age eleven, he’s bold, curious, and strong-willed. He also has a sensitive conscience in his way, and a good…
• May 10, 2024

  Character Spotlight: Thad Greller, more than comic relief

  Thad is the youngest son of the Duke of Podrar. His father is the king’s chief adviser. I picture him as a few years older than Vane, the main character. Thad doesn’t have a huge role in the book, and you could certainly call him a comic relief character and not be incorrect. But I…
• April 29, 2024

  Character Spotlight: August Hincken

  August is one my favorite characters that I’ve written about. She comes so far and she grows and learns so much over the course of The Magic Council: The Fight for Home. I love August on her own, for her own sake. And I love her with Vane. She doubts herself a lot. She tends…
• April 20, 2024

  Character Spotlight: Queen Gracia

  Gracia Phinnean has become one of my favorite, and I think one of the most complex, characters in my trilogy. To the extent that I added content to books two and three for the upcoming second editions, the content I added pertains to her subplots. Drafting a prequel while working on the second editions really…
• April 14, 2024

  Character Spotlight: Vane the Valiant

  

  “The Magic Council: The Fight for Home” doesn’t follow only one character the way “The Crimson League: The Fight for Hope” follows Kora. It has a more omniscient point of view. That said, Vane Unsten is definitely the protagonist of book two of the Herezoth trilogy. He’s a sorcerer, the nephew of villain Zalski Forzythe…
• January 9, 2024

  Character Spotlight: Zalski Forzythe, because everyone loves a good villain

  Zalski Forzythe (ZAL-ski FOR-zaith, ) is definitely my favorite villain–and one of my favorite characters overall–in my entire series. He’s one of those characters who absorbs all the focus in every scene he’s in. Every editing pass I made through The Crimson League: The Fight for Hope, I could feel the anticipation when I knew…
• January 8, 2024

  Character Spotlight (because my novel is 99 cents right now): Lanokas the Lighthearted

  Preparing for my book launch last summer, it didn’t take me long to decide to start character spotlights with Lanokas (LAN-oh-kass), the Crimson League’s swordsman. I realized relatively recently that, apart from one couple who steals the show in book two of my trilogy, almost all of my favorite scenes or discussions in the entire…
• November 22, 2023

  I just realized one of my characters is a lot like Cera from “The Land Before Time”

  I loved The Land Before Time as a kid, and I particularly loved Cera–the triceratops character. Yellow was always my favorite color, and not only is Cera golden in hue–I’ll be honest, that’s probably why I originally liked her–but she’s colorful in character. It struck me out of the blue this morning that one of…
• October 9, 2023

  “The Once and Future King” and Sir Gawain

  One thing you may not know about me is that Arthurian Legend is one of my borderline obsessions. (They are ALL British, though I’m American. But that’s another story.) T. H. White’s The Once and Future King is one of my favorite books of all time. It taught me how to introduce deep themes of…
• July 11, 2023

  Character Spotlight: Kansten the Lovable Badger

  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…