The Inspiration Behind In Enemy Hands

by M.A. Church

About a year ago, I was taking a break from writing and was goofing off on the Internet and ended up on Google Images. Originally I’d typed in vampires, then an incubus caught my eye, and from there it was a short trip to looking at fey-type characters, lol.

Since it was so long ago, I don’t remember why I was looking at these types of beings—probably needed character inspiration pictures. Then it happened… I ran across an image, one drawn by an artist.

I swear, my world actually stopped. In the artist’s rendition, one character had long black hair and the other had long white. I was so fascinated with the picture, I scrounged around on the Internet until I found who drew it and her gallery. Unfortunately, she’s French, so I couldn’t speak to her, but I saved the link.

The black-headed one (Adlar) is actually what the cover for In Enemy Hands is based on. His pale, pale skin, jet black hair, and pointed ears caught my attention. There was this look about him—introspective, but also restrained violence.

I knew then I had to write these two characters.

When I write science fiction, I usually start with the characters. Once I have them, and know their background, the world building starts from there. The picture I used for inspiration had the character standing side-by-side. The dark-headed one was standings upright with his arms crossed. The white-headed one (Varo) is slightly bent at the waist, his arms crossed, and leaning over a post. They’re both looking into the distance. There is an ease between the two of them, and I knew somehow that was going to be very important to the story.

There’s also a lot of play on imagery in the story. Good guys usually wear the white hats, right? *Points at Varo* There’s Varo with his white-blond hair. Then there’s Adlar, with his pale looks and black hair. Bad guys were black hats, right? *Grin* One of the things you often see in my stories is that appearances can be deceiving. Continue reading →