WARNING: CONTAINS SLIGHT SPOILERS! You are recommended to read at least Book One: The Noble Bandit. It would be ideal for you to have read Book Two: A Bundle of Fools as well.
Nathan the Hieun I loved the idea of rangers. Like the ones from The Lord of the Rings movies. Hiding in the forest, clad in green cloaks and masks. Able to become unseen at any moment, as long as they're in their element. That was the origin of Nathan. I wanted that, but with a thief, not a ranger. And I'm pretty sure that's very quickly established with him in The Noble Bandit.
Nathan is the essence of conflict. He has a moral code, yet he steals. He's bitter at crimes done to him, yet he's a criminal. I love the sense of duality for him, because it constantly leads to bigger issues. One person cannot live two different lives and Nathan has to come to terms with this over the series.
Many people think that I modeled Nathan after me. I didn't, but I can understand that because they kinda all have a great deal of me in their character because I'm writing them. It's a might difficult to not put a piece of myself in every character when I'm the author. But no, Nathan is not my self-insert. The core of what I wanted for Nathan was a fiery, reckless idiot. That's a good starting place for a protagonist, because we get to watch him grow and overcome. See if you can notice the little changes and not-so-little changes for Nathan as the series progresses.
Nathan's drawing (see in The Art of the Zalian Chronicles) was the very first drawing I received from my incredibly talented artist, Trevor. And I don't mean that tongue in cheek or anything. I thought he was very gifted, but he disagreed fervently. If there was one thing I was a little confused by, it was the way he drew Korhn. If you look at the picture, Korhn has a face that looks kind of like a badger and very un-raccoony tail. When I asked Trevor about this, I came to find that he had never seen a raccoon before. From what I understand, he had a certain idea of what they looked like, but didn't verify it until I started asking about it.
You're probably wondering "Then why didn't you get it fixed?" Well, we were going to, but we were under a stressful amount of time constraints and other obligations. Both of us had newborns at the time and both of us had households that ran on a single income. Both of our wives were stay-at-home moms that were drained at the end of the day when we came home. In short, we were very busy and I had a deadline of when I needed to get A Bundle of Fools out. And mind you, A Bundle of Fools was going to have 5 drawings in it, all done by Trevor alone. We decided he'd move on to another drawing and get back to Nathan later. In the end, we ran out of time and we judged the original drawing was good enough.
Princess Sophia of Ferandar Sophia came into the original story because of two simple thoughts - "There needs to be at least one girl" and "Every medieval fantasy story should have a princess." She became much more, however. I didn't want her to just be a helpless princess, though some people accuse her of being one (she has an arc, you'll see). So, I made her the brains of the group, which really makes sense with her being subject to royal training and all. Sophia has actually become one of my favorite characters partly because of this reason. I love that she can think and reason her way out of problems that others tend to just fight out of. I also adore her innocence, goodness, and kindness. She has a strong faith in the Shepherd and shows such wonderful compassion to everyone she meets.
All of the afore mentioned traits for Sophia were highly based off of my wife. I tend to do this with a lot of the main female love interests of my series. Can you blame me? I also wanted to make her the light to Nathan's darkness, just like my wife is a light to my own darkness. Sophia was created long before I met my wife, but I tried setting up Sophia as the perfect woman and then, lo and behold: I met the perfect woman! I kinda had to model Sophia after my wife at that point. Love you, Honey!
When it came to Sophia's picture (see in The Art of the Zalian Chronicles), I went with AI art for two reasons:
1. The standard I had for her picture was really high (a lot of my previous artists did not like working for me...)
2. AI was just becoming a pretty big thing and I thought I would give it a try.
It turned out really good, but I have since sworn off AI art because it's pretty hard to get it exactly right and it robs live artists of jobs. Plus, it kind of feels like stealing since AI art uses art that already exists to make "new" art.
Jonathan the Knight Oh, Jonny boy. Yeah. Thisguy is my self-insert. "What?" A reader might proclaim. "Nicholas M. Krohn is a conceited jerk that fails at basically everything?" Correct! Wow, that got a little depressing. Let's put some creamer in the coffee.
Jonathan was one of the original three (Nathan, Sophia, Jonathan) because:
1. The princess needs a guard. He acts as both protection from enemies as well as chaperone between the love interests (sad, third wheel music plays).
2. I wanted angry collisions between different worlds. The desperate, destitute thief vs. the privileged, pompous royal. Constantly arguing and not getting along. But, if it was just Sophia, that means that Nathan and Sophia would be the two fighting. And, though some people enjoy the romantic bickering, I didn't want that for my pure princess. Jonathan, instead, stepped into that role. And, my, how he crushed it!
His part was only designed for books 1 and 2. After that, his crucial role was done. So, as you might all suspect, I was going to kill him off in book 3. And I actually wrote the part. I had it in the manuscript for so long. It was beautifully written and edited and everything.
But I didn't.
Why didn't I? There were various reasons, but I think the one that stuck with me the most was that my wife asked me not to. She knew who Jonathan was. He was me, and she didn't like the thought of me hurting myself, so to speak. Am I using a character commentary to speak against self-harm? Yes, I am. Because if you struggle with thoughts like that, know there are people out there who love you. Even if you can't think of a person that cares for you, there is a God in heaven who loves you and wishes only the best for you. If any of this describes you, I would ask that you send me a message and we can talk. If I don't answer right away, call a friend or a family member. Someone that you can just talk to. And I would ask you to pray because God does care about you and He will be there for you. Don't look at the overwhelming waves of despair around you. Instead, look to Jesus Christ and helping hand He offers you.
"For Thou wilt light my candle: the LORD my God will enlighten my darkness." Psalm 18:28
Nila the Hieun Nila was never supposed to be as big as she became. She was a side character. The comic relief. The odd duckling. But I had such fun with her that I couldn't help but bring her more in the lime-light. And as you can probably tell by now, those who come into the lime-light must experience pain. Tis the way of us authors.
I began to subconsciously form a story for her that I really wanted to tell, so she became less of the comic relief character and more of a serious character as the series progressed. That being said, I always loved going back to her and making some joke through her. Why not? Funny is fun. Plus, I don't want to be one of those storytellers that starts off funny at the beginning of a series and then gets majorly dark and serious with absolutely no humor. No, if I can help it, there will be jokes throughout. And Nila will say a bunch of them.
I really liked the idea of Nathan and Nila being cousins, but having a brother/sister relationship. I, myself, didn't have the strongest bond with my cousins growing up, but my kids definitely have a wonderful relationship with my brother's children and I love that. And even though Nila's goofy, she has a good head on her shoulders and she takes the role of the responsible one since her cousin doesn't always think things through. Proof that you can be fun and wacky, but also responsible and mature. I sometimes jump between those two moods.
Leos Do you know how many times I was accused of copying Kratos' look from God of War 4? For what it's worth, I wrote Leos before that game ever came out and I had no idea about the game for a while because I don't play those kind of games. I actually got the inspiration for Leos from 10,000 B.C. There's a character called One-Eye, played by Marco Khan. I modeled Leos after him.
Leos was always just going to be a kind of villain harbinger. He's not the big baddie, but comes before him. He was the cave-troll before the balrog, the Nappa before Vegeta, the Loki before Thanos, the Darth Maul before Sidious. And I had a lot of fun with him. He's going to get his own backstory eventually, so stay tuned in case you want to know what's going on in that bald head of his.
I hope I made him a bit deeper of a villain than just a bad guy that was a stepping stone to a larger villain. But I suppose that depends on what you guys think, huh? Let me know!
Lord Seth of Mirrac I feel like I need to step lightly here. There is so much to this character. But a lot of the questions surrounding him doesn't fully dissipate until book 6, I think. So...what to say?
Originally, Seth was going to be much blander than he is now. Then, I changed him into a flat-out insane maniac. I hope, after the third revision of him, I've come to a nice blend. I was writing him around the time when villains were starting to show more depth, personality, and even sympathy. I didn't want Seth to be painted as "misunderstood", by any means, but I didn't want him to be the boring "I'm evil because I'm evil" either.
It's easy to see that Seth is a big planner, which makes a good opposite to Nathan in a way. Nathan loves to improvise and make his plan up as he goes along. Seth, on the other hand, loves to plan every step, every move, everything in advance. When Seth doesn't have a plan, he panics. We see this in The Noble Bandit when he finds out that Nathan and Nila are alive. He explodes in anger at Leos. His plan was messed up and he couldn't stand it. And once the anger subsides, he immediately moves into another planning phase.
This aspect of being a big planner comes directly from me. Writing a ten book series is not something you just dive into. And, honestly, I LOVE planning it all out. I love seeing it all come together and having the hints of things to come and the satisfactory reveals and whatnot. And I can't wait to bring more of Seth into the light as we get further into Heroes & Thieves!