Meet My Character…
Last week I was invited to take part in a Meet my Character Blog Hop by the most excellent writer, Anna Belfrage.
Read on to find out about my most recent main character…
What is the name of your character?
His name is Tobias Celho.
Is he/she fictional or a historic person?
He is a fictional character, a minstrel from Liguria who trained in Paris and who subsequently became a spy across the political and dynastic theatres of Europe.
When and where is the story set?
Tobias lives in the twelfth century and the story takes place on the Aegean and Adriatic Seas and in Byzantine Constantinople. This is a post-Third Crusade period when places like Venice and Genoa are beginning to expand their potential power-bases through the distant Byzantine empire, using trade as a bargaining chip.
The burgeoning merchant class is becoming a force to be reckoned with and Tobias deals in olive oil and olibanum the way others might deal in coin and swords.
What should we know about your main character?
Chiefly that he is an aesthete, a twin and also a dwarf or Little Person.
What is the main conflict?
His tense relationship with his highly strung twin brother.
What messes up his/her life?
The need to shepherd a brother who can be highly reactive. The phrase ‘I am not my brother’s keeper’ is more than apt. As is Peter Dinklage’s wonderful line: ‘I am not defined by my size.’
What is the personal goal of the character? To carry out his task, which is to secure supplies of the infamous and priceless Tyrian purple dye, something the Byzantines will not allow outside of their empire.
Is there a working title for this novel, and can we read more about it?
Tobias is the title. It is Book One of The Triptych Trilogy. You can read a lot more on Tobias in earlier posts on this blog, especially how difficult it has been to write the story. And you will also be able to get a visual imprint of the era, the people and places from https://www.pinterest.com/pruebatten/tobias/
When can we expect the book to be published?
With good luck and a very fair wind – July of 2015.
I look forward to your new book and another great story. As soon as it comes out I will be ordering. Your storytelling holds me and I can hardly put the book down and then I hate when it ends. Best of luck with your new trilogy.
Pat, it won’t be long now. I’m just dealing with a shoulder blade injury that prevents me from writing on the computer for long periods. Cheers!
Interesting, Prue! The only little people I’ve ever known are twins.
Debra, I’ve learned so much about little people from the loveliest woman who has a son with achondroplasia. She runs a blog called Dwarfaware.com and she has been very kind, taking time to answer all my questions. I want Tobias to be a real person but also to operate within the bounds of his condition. In the Middle Ages, he would have been tested physically (in a very dramatic sense – horses, swords, rough roads and tracks)and in less educated areas, treated with suspicion and fear. To be honest nothing changes, even in the twenty first century. Except for medical treatments.