#io lambert

Early 2019 (before I even had social media): From the very start of creating the setting that morphed into Telluria, it was planned to have butterfly-like winged people. I made a couple of characters of this species, twin sisters named Zephyr and Zenith. They were slated to appear in the second book of the series.

Late 2020 - early 2021: In the very first draft of A Summer with the Immortal, there was a minor character with the surname “Aesca” (after Aesculapius). He was a doctor with a symbiotic organism fused to his hand that allowed him to neutralize toxins.

2022: When I rewrote the story, I got rid of Aesca, but I still liked his name. I decided to make a human / Aesculapian snake hybrid character with the same surname. This was the earliest version of Tomas.

The mythological Aesculapius had a son named Machaon. “Machaon” later became both the species name and the French word for the common yellow swallowtail. I remembered I had the butterfly-people, and decided to give Tomas Aesca a son with swallowtail-like wings.

June 2023: Started writing the very first version of the sequel. At first, I’d decided to bring Zephyr and Zenith back. I renamed them Dawn and Sierra, made Dawn one of the POV characters, and expanded on their family and the different types of butterflies they were based on. Their family “theme” was nymphalid butterflies. The twins were based on purple emperors, while their father was based on the red peacock.

July 2023: I decided to axe that whole idea (wasn’t working out) and gave the POV to Machaon instead. I really liked the look of red peacocks, and their species name happens to also be a Greek mythology name, so I named his mother “Io” and made her and Machaon be based on red peacocks instead. This didn’t explain why he was now named after a completely different type of butterfly, but…

Machaon’s parents, Io and Tomas, when they were much younger. Io is shown with her first prize-winning shadow box, dedicated entirely to a single large leaf, while Tomas is chilling on a rock near the seaside.

[Image description: Two pencil sketches of altered human characters. Both are white and younger adults.

Image 1: A woman with shoulder-length blond hair and pterosaur-like wings / arms standing next to a first-place podium with a framed leaf on top. She has one hand on the podium and is smiling proudly. One of her wings is partly extended, covering most of her torso and thighs; it has an eyespot near the tip and black markings along the top. She is wearing a shirt, knee-length flowy black pants, and sandals.

Image 2: A man with a long reptile-ish tail covered in leaf-like protrusions sitting on a rock amidst grass, smiling and leaning forward. He is wearing a jumpsuit and is barefoot. His tail is curled around the side of the rock.