Character Profiles: Rigel & Leila

This is our last batch of deep dives into characters, and we’re hitting up our main protagonists: Rigel and Leila!

When I first designed this series, I knew Rigel was going to be a challenge. I mean, the guy tries to kill Leila the first times he sees her. Ingratiating him to other characters, much less you Champions, was going to be a difficult task.

Moreover, I needed Rigel to be believably competent to the point where he was almost scary, but then I needed him to believably switch to helping Leila. The tension of the story would be terrible if he easily switched sides, and if he started the series by siding with her that was going to make the whole thing of him trying to kill her totally fake. And Rigel needed to be the one to try to kill Leila because it would make for interesting romance–which is a real fight for me–and he was my best source of clues for hinting at who was ultimately responsible, which I badly needed!

To make it worse, Rigel wasn’t a talkative character! Killian is charismatic and totally willing to carry on a conversation, which makes it easier to show out the different facets of his personality. Rigel–silent with a penchant for looming–was the exact opposite. This meant I had to show more scenes from his point of view so readers knew what he was thinking and, more importantly, I had to make every sentence he spoke and every physical action he took count on about five different levels.

It’s a huge deal when–during their wedding–Rigel steps up to protect Leila. But it took pretty much the entire book to set up for that moment so you’d be able to understand how crucial that change was.

I wanted Rigel to fall in love in a way that was different from my previous male protagonists–particularly Killian and his love story with Hazel. That was partially what inspired me to make him an assassin–the idea of taking this silent assassin and mashing him with loveable Leila and watching the sparks fly made me actually excited–instead of petrified–to write their romance.

Hilariously, the hardships with Rigel became the very thing that made him fun to write: his subtleties.  The way he can tell the glooms and shades apart and will pet them, the fact that he listens and hears Leila when she’s up late at night and fighting an emotional battle–he shows his character and his love in a hundred tiny ways. And while that was daunting at the start of the series, by the end I was having an utter blast dreaming up all of his minute actions.

Plus, I love a good villains-to-lovers romance, so I was destined to like our taciturn hero!

Fierce, blunt, and hilarious Leila is undoubtedly one of my favorite heroines I’ve ever gotten to write. Her sarcasm combined with the general obliviousness of the fae–and their horror at her playfulness–made her a dream to write.

She tumbled onto the scene because I wanted to write a modern day heroine who didn’t want to be queen and was so different from her people she was practically alien to them. I knew it would make for some great laughs, and I also knew that in order for the fae to be “saved” just as Hazel and Killian have begun whipping the vampires and wizards into shape, that the fae needed someone who wouldn’t back down but was also kind enough to listen.

And that is Leila’s true power. Yes, she won’t take death threats sitting down, or let her nobles push her around, but she’s willing to forgive, and she can be kind. That’s why she accepts Chrysanthe’s friendship–and Chrys pays her back tenfold. It’s why she loves the night mares even though they look like something that stepped out of a horror story–and again, they pay back her love tenfold.

While Leila’s sarcasm is the flashiest part of her personality, it’s her kindness that makes reclaiming the Night Realm possible. The Night Court would never have shown up for a queen who only belittled fae and did whatever she wanted. But they would die for Leila because she’s strong enough to stop the infighting, and soft enough to forgive them.

For example, even though she hates socials and does everything she can to decrease spending, she knows those events are important to the fae, so she makes sure they happen. (On a much more reasonable budget, but it’s the thought that counts!) And while she resists tea for almost the entirety of the series, her loyalty to her people is what makes her break and try tea–and she’s rewarded because it turns out her people decided to try coffee because of their loyalty to her.

Leila is all about opposites coming together. She’s human and fae; sarcastic and soft; strong in magic but weak in her own realm; intelligent but ignorant in a lot of fae ways.

There won’t ever be another heroine quite like Leila, but I loved her story, and I can’t wait to watch her keep growing as the Magiford stories continue.

That’s all for today, Champions! I hope you enjoyed our character studies. We still have a few more themed posts to go through–I hope you’re having as much fun as I am! Until next time, have a beautiful day!

Series Experiment: Fae Emperor

Warning: Today’s post has big spoilers for Court of Midnight and Deception! Do not proceed if you haven’t read it yet!

When I wrote the Hall of Blood and Mercy series, I mentioned I pulled a few experiments. I had repeating scenes that you see in every book–in HoBaM it was dinner with the vampires, in CoMaD it’s the cafe scenes–that I played around with, and I experimented with plotting systems, characters, and more. (If you want to read more, click here!)

In Court of Midnight and Deception I carried out another mini experiment–or perhaps we could even call it a mini quest–and that was combatting power creep.

Power creep is what you see in long book series/TV series/movies as the heroes acquire new skills that make them increasingly more powerful and are then pitted against increasingly powerful villains. (It’s also commonly called Power Escalation.)

You may start a series where the villain is threatening the city and in order to save the city our hero has to learn the most ultimate of all magic skills: Power XYZ. At the end of the book, the hero learns XYZ and is able to defeat the villain. But what can the writer do for the next book? They have to up the tension, of course, which means the baddie will now threaten the entire country, and power XYZ isn’t strong enough to overcome it! The hero has to learn a new ultimate skill!

You’ll see this most often in fantasy shows/books/movies, but it’s pretty prevalent in entertainment in general.

The danger of power creep is that it can make things feel boring. By the third time it happens, you know the Hero is going to get the new ultimate skill to conquer the villain–who is now the 5th generation of badness our hero is facing and frankly not frightening given that you’ve seen this happen again and again and again.

Power creep tends to especially be a problem with magically inclined heroines/heroes. Their magical powers keep increasing so they can face the problems they come across–because they have to since the hero needs to face everything all by themselves, right?

Leila, as an inexperienced queen with a broke Court and ungrateful citizens was in serious danger of experiencing power creep. Sure, I could make her charisma what wins her people over, and give her a hefty amount of magic so she can do cool things like wake up a hydra, and there would be little danger there, particularly since Queen Rime is around and she can kick Leila’s butt any day.

The real danger would be if Leila was the one to save the night realm all by herself–talk about over powered!–and if she also became the sole figure the fae rallied behind.

The problem was…Leila needed to become the monarch the fae look to. Given what I have planned for future series that follow the Paragon’s search (more on this coming in future posts!) I needed the fae to get it together and collectively wake up and stop all the infighting.

Leila is best suited for that for all the reasons laid out in the books…but the power creep!!

So I tempered her powers by requiring her Court to stand with her to save the Night Realm and even to get her wings. She still doesn’t have wings unless her people are there and standing in the gap between Leila and the Night Realm for her. But that still wasn’t quite enough to steer her into the clear.

Leila saves her Court–which was bankrupt, on the brink of destruction, and the biggest dumpster fire ever–in the span of a year. If I added into it that she needed to become the fae empress–which requires the blessing/support of Courts from multiple regions, not just the Midwest?? I’d never be able to pull it off in three books–there would be too many Courts to introduce–and it would make Leila ridiculously powerful in the span of a few months. No thanks.

So, I decided to slowly have Leila gather additional support in the background of future trilogies. She’s got the Midwest behind her, but as we know there are lots of fae Courts out there in other regions–including all of Rime’s siblings that rule the Winter Courts.

And giving Leila the opportunity to keep growing is something unique I can pull off because we’ll keep seeing her. Hazel is similar. She’s the Elite’s trainee, not the Elite herself–it’s kind of like she’s got training wheels on, so it shows how important she is without making her the most-important-wizard-in-the-whole-universe.

Hazel and/or Leila working by themselves won’t be able to fix magic and save supernaturals. Even if the two of them work together they still couldn’t pull it off. It’s going to require help from a lot of groups/people, including supernaturals who are older, stronger, and more experienced than them.

And THAT is how I figured out how to combat power creep in this series, muwahahah!

I hope you enjoyed this peek behind the curtains of my mind. I typically do have some sort of writing issue/axe to grind with every series I write. For Leila’s series, it was power creep!

Thanks for reading, Champions, I hope you have a fun-filled week!

The Night Mares’ Inspiration

The night mares are an integral piece of the Court of Midnight and Deception books, and I knew when I was plotting the trilogy out that I wanted them to play the roles of kingmakers and supporters. But when it came time to write, the night mares stampeded into the books with vivid personalities, specific body language, and a planned arc.

A lot of that was inspired by a real life gelding I rode, who was named Abo.

Abo was a huge gelding–his height specifically influenced Solstice–and he was a retired jumper with more training that I ever knew how to use. (This also inspired a lot of the scenes where the night mares jump and do fancy things that Leila is unable to keep up with.) As an older gelding, he greatly inspired Fax because it wasn’t safe for him to jump much, but he was still impressive enough to school me in riding even though I spent my childhood around horses.

Me and Abo! He was actually a dark, almost black-bay color, he just bleached out a lot under the summer sun!

Abo acted a lot like a grumpy grandpa–his body language very specifically inspired the night mares because he went through life with his ears half pinned more often then not, but he was the sweetest teddy bear ever. He nickered whenever he saw me, let me lean into him and wrap my arms around him whenever I’d had a particularly rough day, he’d press his muzzle against my temple after I kissed his nose, and he had the brightest, sweetest eyes.

Unfortunately, Abo died in October, right after I finished Crown of Moonlight. It was unexpected and very sudden, and it broke my heart. It’s been months and I still miss him and still cry for him occasionally, but it’s gotten a lot better. (I now ride a hilarious goofball of a horse who makes me laugh, so I’m still riding!)

The worst time was when I knew I needed to write the Queen’s Crown, and I had no idea how I was going to drag myself through writing about Leila and the night mares–who had to play a key role in several scenes in order to carry out the story properly–when I’d lost the horse that had inspired them.

How was I going to write about these horses, who all resembled Abo in a thousand different ways?

I’m afraid the books did suffer a little–the night mares aren’t in the beginning of Queen’s Crown very much as I was trying to figure out how to write them without crying. But I’m still really happy with Fax and the night mares and their contribution in the second half of the book, and this series will always be very special to me because of what Abo meant to me.

I’m afraid that’s all I’ve got in me for today. Have a lovely week, Champions! I hope you love the night mares a little more after learning about their inspiration.