Day 6 – Lance and Cass

Because I’m getting close to finishing the fifth book in The Hunger series, I thought it might be fun to talk about the genesis of the two main characters.

The idea of a depressed man rediscovering himself during the apocalypse was an extension of what I was going through at the time. I was a digital forensic analyst for the federal government for around six years. There were a lot of truly horrible cases I was involved with that changed me. The job crushed my soul. I was so miserable that I quit without another gig lined up. There were vague plans about running my own IT company, but those dissipated in a hurry. I spent six months doing next to nothing before I discovered the Kindle revolution and decided to become a writer. I was thirty. A great, young age to write fiction for the first time.

Even though all I did was sit on my ass for half a year, I felt like myself for the first time in half a decade. I could breathe. During the apocalypse of my career, I found who I was again.

Enter Lance.

Now, that’s about as far as the similarities between Lance and I go. He’s a smart ass, for sure, but he doesn’t hold a candle to me. The rest of his personality was fleshed out as I wrote the first few chapters. One of the main character traits I wanted to maintain for the first few books was that Lance was absolutely not an alpha male.

I’d read too many zombie novels at the time that were full of Seals and Delta Force hard cases. Writing about amazing, perfect, killing machines fawned over by the other characters wasn’t something that interested me. Having Lance be a weaker main character was a risk, but one I’m glad I took. A few reviewers didn’t like it, and I get that, but the twist opened the door for someone else.

Enter Cass.

I fucking love bad ass female characters. Even in the Asher Benson series, which is chock full of macho dude bros throwing fists and shooting guns, I had to get a tough woman in there in Bree Manning.

While it’s true that I based some of Cass around my wife, it probably isn’t what you expect. Cass is full of piss and vinegar all the time. For some reason, The Tall One seems to think I got that stuff from her. The Tall One is sweet and kind. The opposite of Cass. But, they both play the piano, shoot guns, kick ass athletically, and are fiercely loyal.

Basically, I took all the character traits that are under the hood from my wife. The violence and quips and fuck you attitude on the surface are conjured out of my booze-addled brain.

As much as I wanted Lance to harden through the books, I needed Cass to soften. She was extreme at the start. Still was by book three, but I wanted a few cracks to appear in the veneer. I actually had to toughen her up a bit during book three, because The Tall One said she was becoming a wuss.

Well, it’s a holiday and I have a BBQ in the early afternoon, so I need to stop rambling.

Today, I wrote 1706 words (roughly 7-9 pages) in Decayed (The Hunger #5), bringing the total to 67248 (somewhere between 260 and 300 pages).

See ya tomorrow!

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