Jan 27, 2014

Who Is Favo Carr?

One of the questions I get asked a fair bit is who or what inspired the characters I've written. To be fair, I've a different answer for each character - in many cases, the ways the characters were inspired were as varied as the characters themselves, and many of them are actually amalgams from a cast of sources. But in light of the current and soon to be birthed "Steel & Sky", I thought a bit of background on Favo Carr might be
appreciated.

He came originally from two characters: one in Final Fantasy XII and one in Star Wars: Balthier and Han Solo. Kind of an adorable but cocky scoundrel. Well dressed. Polite. Charming. And a bit filthy. I always hear his voice sounding a fair bit like Jude Law, but lately, he's been looking more and more like Tom Hiddleston (with sun-bleached hair). Stop your swooning, ladies. This lad's not spoken for, but good lord does he have more issues than Rolling Stone. Though, if you like that sort of thing, go right ahead.

We first meet him, briefly, in the Chronicles of Aesirium, book one: Reaper's Return. He's a villain, of sorts. An elegant thug. A miscreant and a coin-operated criminal whose main interactions with our heroes is to be hunting down a mysterious object called the Morrow Stone.

I had a few plans for the man - he was fun, he was my favorite mix of naughty, but, really, he wasn't the Big Bad from the books and I'd considered him more of a red herring than anything. But then a funny thing happened. I started to genuinely like the character. He loved to talk, but had a style of verbal waltzing that I found charming. The man could talk his way out of most issues, but, as it turned out, he didn't mind occasionally getting his hands dirty. Form and function.

He's an odd mix of street smarts, book-learned magic and good old-fashioned practical experience. He can pick the antennae off a flea at thirty meters with his trusty Mark IV SpellShot, and that isn't even the least of the tricks he keeps up his sleeves. It goes mostly unmentioned in the books, but he's a fine dancer and even considered a future on the stage, but he lost interest in drama when he discovered that you didn't get to keep the costumes.

Oh, and all that practice with the rapier? A bit of refinement and it works even better in real life.

It was some point around book four where my editor sat me down in a sort of intervention and asked me, "okay, I have to know: are you ever going to kill him? It's like he's freaking immortal or something. Nobody is that lucky." And thus the legend of the Immortal Favo Carr was born.

I shouldn't think it too great a spoiler to reveal that he is also one of the main characters in my newest series, "Tales of the Dead Man", and we meet him right around the beginning of "Steel & Sky". Though just how he comes to be a part of this great new adventure....well, you'll have to read it and find out. Trust me, compared to the things that get laid out in this next series, mentioning that Favo is in the books is the LEAST spoilerish thing I could tell you. Well, maybe I could mention that it takes place in Aerthos, as well. And there just may be a few other cameos here and there. But I'm not telling.

Oh, and on a little behind the scenes note: whenever I'm writing Favo's scenes, I play the Sherlock Holmes or Pacific Rim soundtracks. It seems to make him walk with a bit more swagger in his step. Go figure.