Melanie Nilles

I apologize for my absenteeism in the last week. It’s been hell. I am in the process of completely rewriting Dark Angel and with most of it to go, I’m thinking I’m nuts. To make up for this, I thought I’d treat you to something special, if not a little different.

I decided it might be fun to share some trivia facts about my writing of the series, before I move on too far into other projects and forget. I hope you enjoy it

1. The character of Jayson was inspired by the character of Marcus in Babylon 5, played by…Jason Carter. Hence, the name, with a slight spelling change. He’s not a duplicate by any means, but I liked the quirks of Marcus’s personality and wanted that for my character, but there are differences. Jayson also changes over the course of the books, especially once he meets the…Oh, not going to give spoilers. And I have to admit that when I pull out the dvds and watch the series again, I still think JC was cute at that point in time.

2. The rhyming speech for the dragons was something I decided on my own. However, the ability to rhyme consistently was aided by Dr. Seuss. At the time I wrote the first book, I wasn’t reading Seuss and the early scenes that I wrote aren’t as polished as the later ones. By the time I wrote the second through last books, we read Seuss regularly in our household to our child. That helped a lot. Theodore Seuss Geissel had a magical way with words!

3. Istaria Isolder actually developed from a character I had considered for a SF project I wanted to write. I’m glad I didn’t follow up with that but develop a fantasy story around her instead, with a whole new world. She, however, was written into a lesser role than the main character on revisions.

4. I purposely used a lot of North Dakota town names for places on the main continent of Gairdra. Ah, but there’s a catch! Many of those names are altered. After all the books are published, if anyone can find them all and tell me what town I used for that particular name, I’ll send them signed copies of all the books. Here’s a start–Ayrule, the continent name, is the town of Ayr with a few additional letters. Other names are cut or have a letter added to make it just a little different. A few are mentioned exactly as they are. I looked specifically for town names that fit with the naming scheme of the particular continent, but I believe they are all on Ayrule.

5. I purposely swore no dwarves or elves in my books. Too many fantasies use them. “Not I,” said this writer in the spirit of the Little Red Hen. I wanted something different, my own creatures and races.