September 02nd, 2026

When a Character Becomes Someone You Never Expected

Blood of the Bone-King, book 2, Book of the Watchers
September 2
I’m editing one of my novels, Blood of the Bone-King, second in Book of Watchers series, and reading about the MMC, Solomon, in these early chapters is quite something. Almost painful.
You see, early Solomon was so different.
Of course, when I first wrote him, I didn't know who he would become. Now I know where I’ve taken him.
Or perhaps where he’s taken me, the writer.
What makes Solomon interesting is that he doesn't start out as a straightforward villain. He saves Mara. He's curious about her, fascinated by what she can do, and there are glimpses of genuine concern.
Yet even here, I'm beginning to see the seed of the flaw that will eventually become enormous: Solomon can care deeply about Mara while still believing his judgment about what is best for her outranks her right to choose for herself.
Knowing what comes later makes these early scenes rather unsettling.
At one point Mara asks him:
“How could you be there and not... do anything?”
When I first wrote those words, Mara was asking why Solomon had once stood by while someone else hurt her. Tortured her.
Reading them now, however, they sound almost like an accusation against the man Solomon will eventually become.
The question could just as easily become:
How could you love me and still do this to me?
And perhaps that's the tragedy of Solomon.
His problem isn’t, he feels nothing. It's that love, possession, protection, fear of losing someone, and the belief that I know what's best for you can become tangled together until even he may no longer recognize where one ends and another begins.
Then, while I'm thinking about Solomon, my mind wanders to his brother.
Maelor.
Uh-oh. Spoiler territory.
Let's simply say that Maelor has quite a hold over his brother.
Which started me thinking about siblings in general. Brothers and even sisters can have extraordinary influence over us. After all, those relationships begin before we're fully formed. A sibling can become our first rival, protector, accomplice, tormentor, or mirror.
And with Solomon and Maelor, we're talking about identical twins.
That raises an even more interesting question:
Where does one brother's identity end and the other's begin?
Whatever Maelor becomes, Solomon cannot simply stop loving his brother. And every compromise Solomon makes for that love makes the next compromise a little easier.
I'm only protecting my brother.
I'm only protecting Mara.
She doesn't understand the danger.
She'll understand eventually.
I had no choice.
I'm doing this because I love her.
And somewhere along the way, the man who once might have been horrified by certain choices becomes capable of making them himself.
That's what makes rereading early Solomon rather poignant. I can still see the man he might have remained.
But this is the Book of Watchers, and I'm not quite finished with Solomon yet.
There was something worth saving in him before he became the man Mara needed to escape from.
The question is...
Can he find his way back?