Bringing My Characters to Life

I love words.

To me, words are x-ray images allowing me to peek beneath the surface of the world. They help me perceive beyond the superficial to the soul of the world and the quantum-like web that connect everyone and everything (I have a whole theory about the Universal Web that I’ll post in the coming days).

In fact, I even include an important analogy in NEMESIS SPAWNED, likening conscious beings to the various incarnations of words:

“. . . the Ouroboros are the thoughts of space and time, ultimately changeable. We avatars are the speech, incorporeal and tenuously physical, yet easily transformed at a whim. Our mortal creations, however, are the written expressions of life . . .”

And yet . . .

As much as I love words, when I was writing NEMESIS SPAWNED (and the entire Reflections of Shadow series), I couldn’t help but desire something much more concrete to breathe life into the characters I’d created. I know how I saw them in my mind, but I wanted you to see them also . . . and I knew that a picture really is sometimes worth a thousand words.

To that end, I struggled with some digital image software to approximate my vision, but always less than 100% successfully. Then, shortly after publishing NEMESIS SPAWNED last year, I promised myself that I would commission character images from a wonderful artist, whose work I love and appreciate. But, as excited as I was to finally see a professional artist rendering of the characters so dear to me, it was not meant to be. Unfortunately, the current state of the world has gotten in the way. In a nutshell, being Canadian, trying to negotiate an American artist commission with the current exchange rate has sunk the notion completely (Cue raspberry blowing noise here).

I have persevered, however.

I decided to give character creation another shot and have finally come up with images that I think are not too shabby.

Thus, without further ado and for your viewing pleasure, I give you some of the main characters from NEMESIS SPAWNED and the Reflections of Shadow trilogy (with many more to come) . . .

Alexander Cadeyrn – Our protagonist: