Behind the Character: Clalls
As an author I will admit to loving my main characters so much that I have crafted an entire love story for them.
Which means, I will force them to grow as a person, and then make the romance a tiring and vexing process – because every strong relationship develops by going through hard times. Or at least that’s what I believe.
In my Unexpected Series, my main characters get a love story and so will a few secondary characters who deserve a happily ever after. I’m a romance junkie and I am always watching my characters grow, waiting and plotting their love story. All of my characters have that little soft side to them – all but Clalls.
Clalls is Garna’s communication officer.
At the end of Unexpected Hostage book 1, you read about Clalls eavesdropping on a conversation between Sci and Sands. As he listens he learns that Sci’s brother was taken by a Numan named Fynbar. Sci’s brother – Chollar, arranged for Sands to get Sci off the planet were Sci would be safe from the Cerebrals who had planned to hurt him. To do so, Chollar had to allow the Cerebrals to capture him, giving Sands the distraction needed to grab Sci’s unconscious body and escape the planet.
Clalls makes a deal with Sci that if he finds his brother, Sci will owe him a favor.
At the beginning of Unexpected Demon book 2, the story begins with Clalls and Vivra (the heroine) surviving a ship wide disease that killed everyone but thirty-six crew members. In the prologue you get a little insight into Clalls’s character, but you understand more as the story progresses.
He’s not a follower, a leader or team player.
Clalls’s pale skin and hair is from his quarter Yunkin ancestry. His long and pointed teeth are proof of his Night Demon blood lines. And what many will not pick up is that his eyes are black where everyone else is white – that’s because he’s also part Allus. His irises are yellow and that part of his ancestry will be unfolded later.
He’s such a mixture of races and horrible childhood experiences that he is as reliable as – for a lack of a better word – Rumpelstiltskin. The tricks, wayward deals and prying are synonymous with Clalls.
What makes this series so fun to write is that the crew on Garna, is not made up of all honorable, or drop dead attractive characters. There are people who are scared, who have cybernetic limbs and… then there is Clalls. The leader, Captain Rannn is forced to accept these wide variety of personalities and make a place for him or her despite major character flaws.
As I wrapped up the final edits on Unexpected Demon I asked my beta readers what they wanted expanded in the story. One common response was to know what happened on Eldon.
Eldon was the planet with the outbreak that killed billions on the planet.
I decided to add that to the bonus content. I included back story – specifically what Eldon’s last days looked like. I wrote a short fiction, about 13K words from Clalls point of view.
The story takes place before the prologue in Unexpected Demon, and you can read it here.
If you have a few moments, I hope you get a chance to read it, it is not a romance, but it give a lot of inside into my world, and into the motivations of my unfaithful character Clalls.
*featured image found on pintrest.
Behind the Character: Sands
Who is he?
No joke, this guy was an accident I wrote in Unexpected Prize. He appeared during the early drafts when the Rastos Captain was trying to sell “The Cerebral” to the Chancellor. I was in a jam trying to figure out how to smoothly introduce Sci – the Cerebral into the story. It may be a good time to confess I didn’t outline very well for Unexpected Prize.
Sci was going to be my hero in the debut novel Unexpected Hostage. So I needed to make sure he was rememberable. Something that readers would think about after they finished reading. I needed to make them curious about a man that didn’t have one word of dialog. Not sure if I hit the mark on that, but it is, what it is.
During the first draft of Unexpected Prize, Sci was in a cage – awake and ended up using Cara to free himself. After re-reading that scene over and over…the plot holes were endless so I decided he needed to be unconscious. The new problem being, if he was so powerful…how would anyone or anything subdue him?
My next thought: I’ll knock him out.
That “person who knocked him out” became Sands the cyborg with metal lines in his jaw and a black leather jacket.
Sands wasn’t supposed to be anybody. At least that was the plan back in 2017 when I was working on Unexpected Prize. He was supposed to be a name forgotten and die quietly within the night during the following book. Kind of like a “red shirt” character…
Once I began Unexpected Hostage he was no longer needed to keep Sci unconscious. That responsibility had transfered to Ansel the Numan. But Sands refused to fall into the background and be forgotten.
I kept writing him into scene and scene, the jerk would make some snarky remark to someone, show no loyalty, and yet have a great deal of information about everything. At one point he even exposed Sasha’s secrets half heartedly blackmailing her. Sands became the simmering chaos to bring the characters to life. Sands developed into a perfect static character that had a unique physical look, a
Sands became the simmering chaos to bring the characters to life. He developed into a perfect static character that had a unique physical look, a distance brooding personality and unexplored skills.
To sum it up, he became one of my favorite characters.
While working on the rough drafts and outlines of two other books in the series, I learned Sands backstory – specifically how he became a cyborg. I discovered who he was before the change and why he acts the way he does. Knowing what I know, I just want to wrap my arms around him and try to hug the flesh and metal to remind him that he never lost himself. He just lost his way.
Seriously, this male deserves a happily ever after.
And just in case you noticed…. I don’t know when it happened but, Sands lost his leather jacket at some point during the Donnie (the cannibal space scavenger) attack.
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