I’m going to apologize ahead of time because I’m pretty sure this post is a little all over the place, but sometimes it’s nice to step out of the lines and just write. Today I’m going to talk about what inspired some of the characters in my Guild trilogy and not just them in general, but some of their specific quirks and such. So let’s get into it.
So the main character of the Guild Trilogy is Silent Night and she was mostly inspired by Celaena Sardothien of "Throne of Glass" by Sarah J. Maas. That series is one of my favourites ever and inspired me to write about my own assassins. Silent and Celaena share a lot of sass, tragedy, and opinions. They also both enjoy reading, but that was also inspired by my own love of reading. In the book, Silent reveals she likes dancing to dub step. The song is specifically Bangarang by SKRIILLEX which I couldn’t reference in the book directly due to copyright, but the song was popular in my high school when I wrote the first draft and so it stuck. Silent also likes some heavy metal like me.
Ajax Forrester, the main man in the trilogy and Silent’s Resistance guard in book one wasn’t really inspired by anybody in particular, but I wanted him to be a mixture of all the male characters I’ve enjoyed reading about over the years. It was important to me that he was a quieter type with a heart of gold. He’s also very loyal to his friends. A fun fact about Ajax is that his name comes from a city about two hours away from where I live, a part of the Greater Toronto Area as we call it. The city Ajax is also actually named after a warship that sunk during one of the great wars.
I’m not entirely sure who inspired Blake Solarin, but her name comes from a female character in the anime series RWBY. I really liked the idea of using Blake as a girl’s name. Blake is a big reader like me and quiet. She’s very down to earth and super protective and she represents all the mom-friends out there who have to deal with a lot of bullshit lol.
Last but not least is Sebastian Foster, better known as Bast. Now Bast is named after a character from "The Name of The Wind" by Patrick Rothfuss. The Bast in that book isn’t short for anything, but I figured in a non-fantasy world, people wouldn’t realistically call their kid just Bast, so I made the full name Sebastian. Bast is a jokester and typically a ray of light, which is a reflection of the kind of person I’d like to be. Bast also loves food and always heaps his plate up as high as he can. He can also be quite self-conscious of himself on the inside though, which is the little piece of me he carries with him.
And that’s all I have for you today. I hope you enjoyed my rambling and gaining some insight on the characters of my trilogy. Silent Night and Sacred Ruse are available for purchase on several platforms right now. Links are on my homepage if you’re interested. My next blog post will be the second in my self-publishing series, so keep an eye out. (Featured character art done by @autospino on Instagram)