#wardbreaker

Here’s a fun tidbit about Brysson’s Secret Backstory!

I think he mentioned in Wardbreaker how he used to be a mercenary in the Outlands of the Shattered World?

Well

Brysson was raised by his older brother in an outlands village overgrown with roses. He was always a bit of a wild kid and his brother was always a bit overprotective, so that led to them butting heads Rather A Lot

And, well, one evening they got into a bit of an argument, and, y’know, two flaring tempers stuck in a room together plus fire magic equals a Problem

And One house on fire very quickly becomes Everyone’s problem!!

It was an accident, but that didn’t really make things much better

That would be Kyrin!

Kyrin is such a disaster I love him

He’s pretentious and arrogant and insecure and angsty as heck and honestly wouldn’t know a healthy coping mechanism if it walked up and gave him a warm hug, but

Well

The kid tries so dang hard

Beneath his (eggshell thin) Toughguy Facade, he’s just a neurodivergent teen in a rough spot who’s doing his best to deal with a world that can’t be bothered to deal with him

And I love writing him because I love exploring the dissonant vibes between the person he is and the person he thinks he wants to be — and I love watching him grow as his situation changes

(Also he’s fun to poke and I enjoy throwing him into silly Fantasy Nonsense)

I say this because I once outlined a book with 10 chapters, subtracted 1, and ended up with 12

I’m sitting here, wearing sunglasses to protect my eyes from shaded windows, hiding away from the ear-scraping AC and the all-consuming flood of endless TV chatter....

I didn’t do it on purpose — I wrote Wardbreaker before I was diagnosed, before I even knew that my sensory reality wasn’t what some might call “normal” — but....

I wrote a book about a kid whose life is shaped by a disability he can’t name, who struggles to do things others find easy as breathing, who gets overwhelmed by ‘invisible’ noises other people tune out too well to hear — a kid who defines himself by his studied passions even as the world defines him by standards he can’t meet — who struggles and struggles to make himself understood, even as he struggles to understand why he’s different

and...

...well, sometimes I think about that.

I didn’t do it on purpose. I didn’t realize that my headaches were migraines and my fatigue was sensory overload. I didn’t know that other people don’t always hurt the way I hurt — I thought other people were just better at living with it

And now that I know it’s a Thing, every so often it hits me:

I didn’t intend to represent myself in Wardbreaker. Honestly, in most ways, Kyrin is nothing at all like me

Brysson:

Tryn:

Briea:

Sal:

Dain:

And finally, Kyrin:

The Magician is a card of ambition, of potential, of drive and determination. With your hard-earned skills and the tools in your hands, you have everything you need to work your will upon the world.