I Gave Them Names… They Gave Me Headaches

Creating a fictional person sounds easy while the idea is still floating around in your head. You choose a name, assign a purpose, give the poor soul a recognizable trait, and send them toward whatever disaster you have already arranged. In theory, the process is neat, controlled, and almost professional. That illusion usually survives for several pages.

Once the figure begins to feel real, the outline becomes less of a plan and more of a polite suggestion. Motivations deepen, loyalties shift, supporting roles demand additional space, and carefully arranged scenes start collapsing because someone who does not technically exist has developed standards. Before long, the author is revising an entire chapter to accommodate the objections of an imaginary person.

The amusing explanation is that characters somehow take control of the narrative, but the truth is less mystical and more revealing. Writers build them from fragments of relatives, friends, military service, games, novels, films, old memories, and experiences they believed they had already finished processing. A mannerism may come from someone encountered years ago, while a moral dilemma can grow from a decision the author never forgot. Imagination gets most of the credit, which is convenient, because memory should be the one we trust for making the story feel real.

That is how Lex Anders, Mara Thorne, and Jorin Callahan entered my series. Each one began from a different influence and required a separate creative approach, although all three eventually became inseparable from the larger movement of the saga. I understood the broad direction of their journeys early, but I did not anticipate how completely their personalities would alter the route.

Lex Anders occupies the center of the series, yet the first secret connected to him appears before the opening chapter. It has been sitting on every cover, displayed openly beneath the title while quietly waiting for someone to notice what the wording actually says. Lex is not his complete first name, because his true name is Alexander. Each volume carries the phrase, “Book 1 of A Lex Anders Saga,” which sounds like “Alexander’s Saga” when spoken aloud.

That small device is also why the covers say, “A Lex Anders Saga” instead of “The Lex Anders Saga.” Replacing that single letter would destroy the entire trick, and I was far too pleased with myself to permit such literary vandalism. So far, only one person has recognized the hidden meaning and asked whether it was intentional. It was, although enough time had passed that I had begun wondering whether subtlety had quietly transformed into unfound Easter egg territory.

The earliest version of Lex came from me being a nerd, which may not be the most dignified origin story, but it is at least honest. COVID was still affecting ordinary life, many of us were spending too much time at home, and I began playing an online role-playing game with friends. Instead of creating a temporary adventurer with a weapon, a few useful abilities, and the emotional complexity of my firepit, I gave him a background. I developed his mother’s history first because her past was essential to understanding who he would eventually become.

That early version did not contain every revelation that would later define him. It did, however, establish a man carrying unanswered questions long before he understood why they mattered. His history suggested that something about his life was incomplete, even if he had no language for the absence. That uncertainty became valuable because it allowed his development to feel like discovery rather than exposition delivered by someone with suspiciously perfect timing.

The series begins on Earth, where readers first encounter Lex within a recognizable modern environment. After several chapters, the narrative expands into Eldradune, which becomes the principal setting for most of the series arc. That transition required more than moving the cast through a portal and hoping everyone admired the scenery. Earth could not feel like the legitimate reality while Eldradune seemed like an elaborate detour.

I am a strong believer in verisimilitude, which is the appearance of truth within a fictional setting. A land can contain prophecy, ancient magic, impossible creatures, and forgotten gods, but it still needs enough internal consistency to keep the audience from noticing the apparatus behind it. Once the opening chapters leave Earth and enter Eldradune, that principle becomes especially important. Readers should not feel as though the real story has been interrupted by an extended vacation in a fantasy world’s Disney theme park.

At first, Earth provides the familiar foundation beneath their feet, but Eldradune gradually challenges everything they thought they understood about history, identity, morality, and power. The characters had to wrestle with that disruption instead of accepting it immediately. Otherwise, their adjustment would have felt less like human adaptation and more like the author had quietly replaced them with enthusiastic tourists. The greater challenge was making Eldradune feel like the true center of the saga rather than a temporary stop before everyone returned to the life that supposedly mattered more.

Lex becomes tied to Eldradune through the concealed truth of his birth. The more he learns about his ancestry, the harder it becomes to separate the man he believed himself to be from the purpose waiting for him there. His arrival is not accidental, and neither is the strange influence he seems to carry over others. The answers he spent his life lacking begin to appear, although they are rarely delivered in a calm room by his therapist.

His natural charisma is one of the qualities that defines him most strongly. People trust him, follow him, and often feel drawn into his orbit before they can explain why. That influence can be useful when leadership is necessary, but it also becomes dangerous when Lex assumes trust should move in both directions. He believes damaged people can still be redeemed, even when everyone else has reached the practical conclusion that certain doors should remain locked.

His deeper struggle begins when he discovers that his birth was planned and connected to a prophecy. He did not choose that design, does not understand its full purpose, and cannot immediately decide whether fulfilling it would be heroic or merely obedient. Destiny sounds impressive until someone realizes it was arranged without their permission. At that point, it begins to resemble an obligation with guaranteed stock options.

Naming him was far less philosophical than constructing his hidden history. I have always liked Alexander, so Lex became a natural variation, and I never seriously considered another first name. His mother became Aisling almost as quickly, which suggests I may have been unconsciously favoring names beginning with the letter A. That also happens to be the first letter of my own name, although I am sure this is entirely accidental and not evidence of literary vanity. The surname Anders completed the rhythm and eventually created the cover Easter egg that appears throughout the book covers.

Mara Thorne developed through a different process because I already understood where her journey would lead before I knew what to call her. I began with red hair, green eyes, a gift for languages, and an intense fascination with history. Those qualities were not decorative, because they became essential to the way she approaches Eldradune’s relics, cultures, and buried truths. Her curiosity gives her a reason to engage with the world rather than merely survive it.

Part of her inspiration came from Lara Croft, particularly the combination of scholarship, physical courage, and interest in vanished civilizations. Other influences came from characters in the Dragonlance novels, including the formidable red-haired queen whose presence demonstrated how beauty, ambition, power, and destiny could coexist. Mara is not a goddess or innately evil in any sense, but she will eventually gain access to extraordinary power. What matters is not simply whether she can wield it, but whether she can relinquish it when possession begins changing her.

Mara is compassionate, intelligent, strong-willed, and driven by an almost compulsive desire to understand everything around her. That hunger allows her to notice patterns others miss, but it can also pull her attention away from friends and immediate responsibilities. She may care deeply for someone while becoming completely absorbed by an inscription, artifact, or unanswered question. Scholarship is noble until Mara misses an important event because she was too busy studying one from eight hundred years ago.

Her childhood helps explain that need for certainty. Mara was raised in an abbey after losing her parents in a car accident, and the institution gave her discipline, education, tradition, and a sense of service. It could not, however, answer every question surrounding the people she never had the chance to know. When the central mysteries of childhood remain unresolved, knowledge can become both comfort and compulsion.

Her name came from several separate influences that eventually fit together. I wanted the initials MT because they are the familiar abbreviation for Montana, a place I loved during my military service. Thorne came from a British biologist I knew in Kuwait, while Mara began as a variation of Lara. The final combination carried personal meaning without sounding like the result of a crowdfunded “name your own character” reward.

Jorin Callahan came from a more personal source. His jovial nature, loyalty, appreciation for ordinary pleasures, and military background were inspired by a friend who died far too young. I did not want to reproduce that person exactly, because Jorin needed a distinct life within the series. I did want to preserve certain qualities that deserved to continue somewhere.

I made Jorin a Special Forces soldier because that had been my friend’s profession. The background gave him discipline, capability, and practical experience with violence, while also allowing me to explore the cost carried by someone who has repeatedly entered situations most people would struggle to imagine. He remains deeply connected to his parents and the values he learned at home. Those roots help steady him while he confronts memories and private demons that determination alone cannot erase.

Jorin’s sense of duty is equally important. He believes strongly in loyalty, responsibility, and the distinction between right and wrong, but experience has taught him that moral choices rarely arrive in clean black and white. War has shown him the gray spaces where honorable intentions collide with limited information and compromised decisions. He understands that doing what is necessary does not automatically make the result righteous.

Eldradune gives those convictions a new arena. Its conflicts involve prophecy, unfamiliar cultures, and dangers beyond anything he faced on Earth, but the central questions remain recognizable. Who deserves protection, which commands should be followed, and when does duty become complicity? These dilemmas connect him to the people around him more effectively than any fantastical calling ever could.

The origin of Jorin’s name is considerably less solemn. Callahan came from the Dirty Harry films because the name carried a rugged quality that suited him. His first name was originally supposed to be Yoran, but I changed it after realizing readers might think about “going #1” every time he appeared. Some sacrifices must be made for literature, and occasionally pronunciation is the first casualty.

Lex, Mara, and Jorin began with different influences because each brings a separate emotional and narrative force to the series. Lex carries questions of identity, destiny, charisma, redemption, and vengeance, while Mara represents intellectual hunger, power, belonging, and the danger of allowing answers to consume everything around her. Jorin contributes loyalty, sacrifice, humor, military realism, and an understanding that morality becomes hardest when every available option carries a cost. Together, they create a balance none of them could achieve alone.

Their relationships also transform Eldradune from a setting into a home they never expected to claim. Lex discovers the truth of his existence there, Mara encounters a living history capable of answering and complicating her deepest questions, and Jorin finds obligations that make departure feel indistinguishable from desertion. That emotional entanglement is what sustains verisimilitude once the opening leaves Earth. Readers are more likely to accept an unfamiliar world when the people they follow stop treating it as temporary.

I knew where these three were ultimately going within the saga, but I could not predict how thoroughly their personalities would redraw the route. They deepened conflicts, complicated relationships, and forced planned events to evolve into something more substantial. That is the peculiar bargain of creating fictional people, because the author chooses the destination while the travelers insist on debating the map. On particularly difficult days, they also appear determined to set fire to the bus they are riding on.

I gave them names, histories, loyalties, wounds, and ambitions. In return, they gave me revisions, complications, stronger ideas, and a series that became richer than the original outline. The arrangement remains wildly unfair, though fairness was probably never part of the contract. I would make it again, because somewhere along the way, they stopped feeling like characters I created and became friends I was fortunate enough to meet.

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