Category Archives: Characters

Characters: Vena Remontar

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When I originally conceived and outlined the story of Princess of Amathar, the character of Vena Remontar didn’t exist.  She came into being as I was writing, another minor character that crosses paths with our hero.  The problem came along later.  As I was writing her, I fell in love with her.  That presented me with an entirely different resolution to the story than I had originally planned, but hers remained a small part.  When I revised the book, the one part that was expanded was the central point in the city of Amathar with Alexander and Vena.  Looking back years later, I’m very glad that I was swayed from my original tale by this beautiful alien princess.

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Characters: Noriandara Remontar

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Noriandara Remontar is the titular character of Princess of Amathar, though she isn’t in most of the first two thirds of the book.  She is the goal, the force that draws Alexander Ashton across the world of Ecos.  Like most of the heroines in Edgar Rice Burroughs, she’s pretty snotty when she meets our hero.  It wasn’t until I was well into the story that I decided she wasn’t going to stop being snotty.  That was my own little additions to Burrough’s formula.

Noriandara Remontar is very tall and blue as are all Amatharians (I wrote this well before Avatar, I must point out).  She is a skilled swordswoman and a knight.

Characters: Augustus Dechantagne

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I created Augie to be a mirror to his brother.  He’s someone that nobody expects to be competent, and he often isn’t, but he might have been had he ever been given the chance to grow up that way.  One of Augie’s great failures– not correctly translating the aboriginies’ language results in one of the major plot points.  On the other hand, in battle, both against armed cultists in the jungle and thousands of lizard men in Birmisia, he proves quite heroic.  Augie was fun to write in that his natural state is easy-going and pleasant, making him quite the counter to his two siblings who are serious and wrapped up in their own torments.

Augie owes a lot to Michael Caine’s character in Zulu, something I pointed to when I went back and wrote book 0, and had him accompanied by Colour Sergeant Bourne.

Characters: Terrence Dechantagne

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Terrence is one of my favorite characters that I’ve written.  He is also as close to an anti-hero as I’ve written.  I originally conceived of him as a kind of Indiana Jones type guy who would carry the action for most of the Senta and the Steel Dragon series.  The truth is that he was rather boring that way.  He needed something, so I gave him an addiction.  Terrence is addicted to White Opthalium, a magical drug which takes him away to another world.  Once I started writing along this path, his character became much more interesting to me.  Here was a guy who is loved and admired by almost everyone except himself.  And because he hates himself, he becomes more and more antagonistic and hateful to everyone else.  People around him see him as a hero, but he can’t see himself as anything but a failure.

Characters: Iolanthe Dechantagne

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In my very first pre-outline ideas about Senta and the Steel Dragon, Iolanthe Dechantagne was going to be the primary character.  Senta originally was nothing but a person who would be the eyes through which we saw Iolanthe.  As the outline firmed up, it became obvious that Iolanthe would be too bitchy to be around all the time.  I got so tired of her that I rewrote her part in book 2 and made Yuah the main character in that book instead.
I don’t know where the idea came from for Iolanthe.  In a lot of ways, she’s a much bitchier version of my mother, at least as I remember her from when I was a kid.  Iolanthe has to be really tough to make it in a man’s world– especially a Victorian one.  And her history explains a lot about her disposition.  Her most distinctive physical feature– her aquamarine eyes, just came out of nowhere.  I was looking for things to make my setting a little more other-worldly and that just popped into being.  Her first name came from a baby name web site, but I made up the last name.  I wanted something that could have gone from French into English aristocracy.
Because she is such a major BITCH, Iolanthe is a lot of fun to write.  She can be very sympathetic and just when you think you’re going to start liking her, she does something excrutiatingly mean.  Still, she is one of the heroes of the story.  So what if she drives her family to distruction, basically enslaves an entire native population, and (arguably) commits several murders. 

Characters: Malagor

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In my first draft of Princess of Amathar, Alexander Ashton was transported to a strange world and found a family of pioneer Amatharians that lived in a remote log cabin.  When I started to describe the wonderful city of Amathar, I didn’t have a reason for this family now to be away from the city unless they were some strange neo-Luddites.  So I wrote them out and created Malagor, one of the many humanoid species living in Ecos for Alexander to run into.  Looking back now, I can see I was definitely influenced by the science fantasy classics Star Trek and Star Wars in his creation.  He is still one of my favorite characters though.

Characters: Patience (The Daffodil Robot)

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Of all my characters, none has gone through as much of a change between first draft and published work as has Patience Smith from His Robot Girlfriend.  Originally she was a rather Amazonian figure, physically very imposing, but much more submissive.  Some might argue that Patience is still submissive, but I think she’s not so much.  When I rewrote the short pieces into a long story, she needed to have much more force of personality so that she could advance the storyline of forcing Mike to change.  A college professor once told me the main character is the one in the story who changes the most– and that would be Mike.

When I started rewriting, I just wasn’t happy with her physical description, so I started completely from scratch, using a young woman I knew as a model– so yes, there really is a Patience out there.  I observed her as carefully as possible (without seeming too creepy) so that I could describe her movements and gestures– like when Patience bounces on her tip-toes or incorporates dance moves into everyday movement.  Since then, I’ve tried to find a human being to at least think about when I write my characters.  Yes, I still know the young woman I patterned Patience after, and no, I never told her she was an inspiration.  I still think it’s a little bit creepy.

Characters: Mike Smith

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The story that became His Robot Girlfriend consisted originally of some short flash fiction and the characters were not very well developed.  When I decided to turn it into a book, I completely rewrote it, adding an ending.  I had to turn some cardboard people into real characters.  In the case of Mike Smith, I just decided to make him– me.  He was a school teacher, about five years older than me, when I started, and instead of being happily married with two kids, he was a widower with two surviving children.  Personality-wise, language-wise, and description-wise, he’s about as close to me as I could get.  As i neared the end, I started feeling a little uncomfortable that he was so much like me, and I began working in little things that made him at least somewhat different.  In the end, physically at least, Mike changes quite a bit.  Patience really gets him into shape.  I just started at the gym two months ago (though I don’t have a Daffodil pushing me along), so this might be a case of life imitating art.

Characters: Norar Remontar

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Since Princess of Amathar is very much an homage to A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs, it’s no surprise that the warrior alien is very much inspired by Tars Tarkas.  Norar Remontar is a proud knight of the city of Amathar and befriends Alexander rather grudgingly.  But once befriended, he is true till the end.  I created the Amatharian names with an idea that they would be very difficult to say aloud– I’m not really sure why.

Characters: Senta Bly

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The funny thing about Senta is that I never intended to write a book about her, let alone make her the main character in a series.  I originally wrote a description from her viewpoint that was supposed to showcase the setting of Brech City.  When I eventually plotted out the trilogy that would become books 1, 3, and 5 of the Senta and the Steel Dragon Series, she took on more and more importance.  When I added books 0, 2, and 4 to the mix, the entire story really became her story.

I’m looking forward to completing the series this summer and am already thinking about another six book series that features Senta later in life.  I won’t get started on that until at least next year, but I’m already feeling the bug to write it.

Senta is precocious and self-confident.  As she grows up she learns more and more magic and discovers that she is a powerful sorceress.  One of the most fun things about writing this series is that the characters are so inter-connected.  Senta has relationships of one sort or another with more than a hundred major and minor characters.  Hopefully this diversity makes her as much fun to read about as she is to write about.