The Main Character - Gavin Anwell

When researching my characters I needed my main character to not only have the likability to others but also mean something.  I needed him to represent something and not just some handsome leading man.  I searched Welsh names.  I chose the given name of the character first.

GAVIN - means the White Hawk of Battle (this ties into his Father - pay very close attention)

Then came his surname and it too had to mean something.

Awell  - derived from the Welsh word annwyl "beloved, dear, or favorite child". Found in north Wales. Anwell, Anwill, Annoil

This meant so much to me.  He stood for something.  He was loved and cherished by those who he knew and those he was yet to discover.

Now I needed to create him.  His eyes and hair.  His body stature and form.  You get the idea.  I threw around many ideas.  I wanted him to be blonde like Bradley James in Merlin.  But it didn't feel right he was too confident.  So I went on to other British actors and finally one day, while watching a very popular movie, where the boy's initials are HP - really you know - I saw him.  My Gavin.

The actor I based Gavin off of was Domhnall Gleeson.  His look was perfect.

I wanted Gavin to be a normal teenager who grew up wanting nothing and having it all and it come crashing down around him.  He needed to be challenged and molded to this amazing selfless young man.  Gavin before he knows where he really came from was never a rude or thoughtless boy.  Just a quiet boy who is loyal to his father and his friends.

In the human realm Gavin looked like any other high school athlete.  Soccer was his sport.  He was long and lean and he possessed the endurance most would only dream of having.  He was well liked but not popular.  In America if you play Soccer you are a bit of a nerd or thought as one because you are not playing football.  After all football is what all the "popular" boys play.  Gavin was liked by his peers, his teachers and most of the people around him.  His features were his red hair and green eyes.  He wasn't beautiful to all but he was beautiful to me.  He is unassuming and would never strut around knowing he is beautiful. That was an important virtue for him to possess.

Watching Gavin become this amazing man before my eyes as I created him and what he did in the book (Descent of the White Flower DOWF) in a sense was developing part of myself too.  You cannot create something from nothing and think it will never change you.  It does.

I wanted to show how someone who believes in a few attributes of himself becomes this leader of both the faery and the human realm.  And this is another evolution of Gavin.  Was he half human and half faery or a faery living as a human boy?  I chose the latter. Gavin being who he was to become I felt that would complete the character instead of complicate it.  Getting the background and history of his parents and lineage was more difficult.  As I wrote in the very beginning developing the Anwell family and how they came to be, changing his parents and where they originally came from as well as their lineage.  I didn't want his parents to be these two shiny beings.  I wanted them to be fractured and damaged as we all are.  Some of us greatly and some just dinged up a bit.  There was no perfection in his world.  Grief and loss were about to become very abundant for this young man but it helped to create who he was and what he is to become.

I fell in love with this character as I developed him.  I was able to shape and mold him as well as break and destroy him.  That is probably one of the greatest joys I have discovered as a writer.  You have the power to create and set up this world and tell a story to those who until now, could or would never believe.