When I started working on my prequel to Last Survivors, the book was not published yet (it wasn’t called Last Survivors, either). I’m not sure what pushed me to write Path-finder’s Tale, although I suspect it was simply the desire not to give up on this universe just yet. I felt attached to my newly-created world, so any excuse to continue writing about it was a good excuse.
In Last Survivors there is a whole part dedicated to Eagle telling Penda who he is and where he comes from. At first glance, an entire book dealing with the same subject might appear redundant, especially to someone who has already read Last Survivors. Nevertheless, one day when I was re-reading this part, the only thing in my mind was: I can’t just leave it like this. I have to develop it. This story deserves more than a passing ten pages. This character deserves his own voice. And it worked. It worked much better than I initially hoped it would.
First of all, Path-finder’s Tale offers a whole new perspective of the universe created in Last Survivors. The idea of the Desert and the people’s blind following of the Sun Gods and Rain Goddesses fascinated me. I wanted to delve deeper into that. How would these people live? What would keep them going? What kind of people are they, anyway? And what about those that enforce the will of the Desert Gods – what motivates them? Why do they cling to their traditions? All these make up fine points for a story, and actually Path-finder’s Tale offers only a brief glimpse – the story of the Desert could be developed even more and, perhaps, one day, it will.
Another aspect is Eagle himself. True, he did share some of his story with Penda, but there were some things that were clearly only glossed over. Path-finder’s Tale focuses on what he didn’t say. There are plenty of unanswered questions about Eagle – and till the end he remained the most mysterious character from Last Survivors. For example: what was his journey from his village to the Temple of the Sun Gods really like? What did he do in the years spent serving the Desert Gods? What about the people he knew in the desert – did he make any friends, any enemies? Why did he choose the name Eagle in the first place? All these needed answers, and once the story was finished I realized that Eagle remains a complex, fascinating character even after his personality traits are explained.
The thing that I wanted most, though, was to approach the character as if he was completely new. I wanted to forget he was Eagle of Last Survivors and try my best not to have the character think and act as Eagle would think and act. It wasn’t difficult, though. The character really was a different person from what he becomes in Last Survivors – he was much younger, for one, so really, seeing him with fresh eyes was not difficult (as I’m sure it won’t be for the readers, either).
At the same time, I knew I had to get him to the point where he was close to becoming Eagle, the Path-finder we all know and love. That wasn’t difficult either, truth be told. Now, I’m not one for character spreadsheets and researching personality types to make my character react “realistically” (I’ve seen this in a lot of creative writing groups and it frankly discouraged the hell out of me). I prefer my characters to evolve organically. And Eagle did. Before I knew it, I had him acting in ways that would explain many of his quirks from Last Survivors. It was as if I was not creating Eagle. Eagle was creating himself. And that’s when you know you’ve done a good job with your character.
Path-finder’s Tale was a great adventure for me. It taught me a lot about developing my stories and choosing which character to focus on and how to work on my worldbuiding skills. It was a satisfying experience for me and I hope it can be the same for you as well. I hope you’ll have as much fun reading it as I had writing it.
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