The next several months will bring author commentaries on all six stories contained within the Tales from Portents collection. My hope is to offer insight into the decisions made in putting the project together and the challenges therein. It’s also fun to point out the little Easter eggs throughout. (I love that crap.) So, SPOILER WARNING is in effect for the duration.
View from Above
I had a note early on about Vlad when coming up with a list of potential stories to tell in this collection (once it became clear it was going to be a collection). Out of all the players in Signs of Portents, Vlad was the guy that made the cut.
Why Vlad?
He played the perfect counterpoint to Soriya, something I didn’t even realize when crafting his backstory. Here was a guy that wasn’t born into his role. It was thrust upon him by outside forces. “Hey, I totally just bit you. You’re wolfen now. Deal with it.”
Because of that act he lost his family. Then he lost his second family. Only after running away for years did he settle in Portents thanks to the help of the Corwell’s.
Yet, through it all he maintained his innocence, his youth. The only difference in their shared tragedy. Where Soriya was forced to learn to become the Greystone, Vlad went to school (rarely) and had a life.
I liked that split between them and how it pulls her up when she needed it.
Pulling the thread from Signs
I kept going back to the autopsy theater with Soriya staring at Vlad’s dead body. The connection between them was deep for her to feel that way at his passing. With View from Above it felt right to honor that relationship and really flesh out its origins.
Adding the backstory really amped up the emotion in that scene felt with his death.
Guilt trip
The third and most powerful reason for the focus on such a bit player like Vlad is simple –
I FELT BAD FOR KILLING THE GUY IN CHAPTER ONE!
When I finished the first draft of that chapter a million years ago, Vlad was a nobody. He was fodder for the mysterious killer hiding in the shadows. With each subsequent draft, with each layer peeled back on the mystery behind his death, I realized there was more to this character, much more than I had been able to show.
There you go. The truth. I am a pathetic romantic that has trouble letting go of his imaginary friends.
Why not Urg?
A good friend e-mailed me recently about his love of Urg and how he hated to see the lovable orc die so quickly in Signs of Portents. At the time I thought nothing of it. More fodder.
But as I wrote this missive, I realized –
I totally should have brought Urg back for Tales from Portents!!! WHY DIDN’T I THINK OF HIM?!
There could have been a call back to the 1961 Yankees baseball Loren found in his apartment. We could have seen Urg at Woodstock or in Vietnam and do this totally insane Forrest Gump Orc Style thing! So many possibilities.
Damn.
Next time –
View from Above thoughts continue next week. (May, already? WTH CALENDAR?!)
Thanks for reading.
