Welcome Blog

Hello! This is J.J! I wanted to create this blog as a way to talk more about my stories and my perspective as a writer and lover of fantasy. I hope to share details that didn’t make it into the final book, and all the little things I think about when writing. My characters mean a lot to me, and I hope at least one of them connects with you too. For me, characters are where the story starts, and I always have so much fun thinking about who a character is. Like a lot of writers, I was a pretty introspective kid with a dream world most people couldn’t crack. That world was populated by characters I created, and characters from video games I connected to. I could talk forever about the game characters that gave me courage and helped articulate feelings I struggled to speak on myself.

            If you’re familiar with games at all, you may know Cloud Strife from Final Fantasy VII. His journey as a character who struggles to connect with others but ultimately finds a found family who truly accept him is a story that meant a ton to me growing up. Those kinds of characters and stories informed my writing style quite a bit. I was always interested in showing characters finding themselves and a found family that supports them, putting an end to their loneliness and the feeling that they’re not understood. I think we all deserve a Tifa Lockheart in our lives, someone who will reach out their hand.

For me, Noa is that person. It was a lot of fun writing someone so unlike me, someone who is so willing to be open and reach out to others. Leos’s characterization followed swiftly after: awkward, routine, closed-off (sorry bud). I could relate and connect with him, and knew that someone like Noa would change his life entirely. I guess, in writing Noa, I wrote someone I could look up to. Someone who I felt didn’t need to change in as much as the world did, on her behalf. Anyway, you’ll learn a lot more about Noa, Leos, Michalis, and many of the other characters in coming books, as so many of them took the reigns of their stories in ways I didn’t originally envision.

But I also look forward to talking more about those stories here, probably with a lot less seriousness! I can’t help but get a little serious and retrospective at the start, but overall, I spend more time thinking about which character is most likely to quote Shrek 2 in daily conversation than anything else. There’s an answer to that one at least, which is probably pretty obvious.

            Anyway, thank you for reading!

-J.J