Yes, as you no doubt know by now, I actually like it when my characters get loose and romp around on their own, but had anyone told me this when I first took up a pen at some ridiculously young age and dared to dream that I might one day become a writer, I might have found this side of things a tad daunting. What do you mean, they get “loose”? I might have asked. How do you control them once they “get out”? How do you get them “back in” again?

Having leant what I have, now my question would be why would anyone want to control or rein in such creativity?

When I was still learning my craft, many years before publishing my first book, Morragt was the first to break loose.

That’s right, the great Chiddran seer from the first book in The Khekarian Series, The Khekarian Threat (published), was originally just a shopkeeper, a small secondary character who Aleisha would pass five minutes with to flesh out the town and bring out the friendliness of the locals.

It was my very first version of The Khekarian Threat, my first attempt at a “big book”. When he went off on a tangent, I didn’t know what was happening, I wasn’t sure that I should even let it continue – and I almost stopped it. The thing was, it intrigued me a bit and I wondered where it would go. I knew that I could strip it all out if it went too astray or if it hit a dead-end. Only it didn’t hit a dead-end, it produced a very rich character and gave a very rich background that over the following years expanded to encompass one-third of the galaxy, produced the Khekarian-Chiddran war, brought in an edge-of-and-beyond-physical-plane element, and ended up booting Sturn into a top ranking royal, which gave him the power to be a super-baddie (with attitude). All of this also led to the Khekarian Series, it was no longer just one book.

Not bad for one minor character going his own way.

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