A Challenge from a Fellow Writer

Theresa Jacobs tagged me on a blog post challenge. 

Why did I chose an animal as my main character?

Here are her questions and my answers.

Why did you choose to use animals as your main character? Is your animal real or mythical?

I actually have three animal characters:

Farloft is my dragon in The Farloft Chronicles. I chose him because I was wracking my brain trying to think of who, or what, my nine-year-old nephew would listen to. Whose advice would he take when he wasn’t listening to his parents, grandparents or aunt? I thought it might just be a very wise old dragon.


Cody a.k.a. Scar is my young protagonist in the Shifting Books of The Twin Cities Series. He is a shape shifter who turns into a wolf. I have always loved wolves and I wanted to write in first person for a change. I thought it would be interesting for both me and my readers to see the world through a wolf’s eyes with a teenager’s point of view.

Kay-o was my first animal character. He is in my Star Traveler Series. He is a creature called a Dar-dolf. Kay-o was written as the comic relief in the books. He is fond of eating the main character’s new gloves on a regular basis, but his favorite treat is Red Raspberry Goo-chews (a sticky sweet candy). Jake, the protagonist in the scifi books says it is good the bad guys don’t know about Kay-o’s love for the sweet treat or the beast would change sides in battle at a heartbeat.

Do you give them human-like appendages? Or try to keep the characters close to their true form.

Farloft is a western dragon, four appendages, plus his wings. He has opposable thumbs and can grab objects with his paws. He uses his wings a lot to hug, bump and caress.

Cody/Scar is either a teenage boy or a full-fledged wolf. As a wolf he thinks like a boy, but is limited to his wolf body. 

Kay-o looks like a cross between a wolf and a bear. He can grab with his front paws like a bear and he will pull at you with both his front paws and his teeth.

Obviously, for writing, they must use English, but in character do they have a language that humans would not understand.

Farloft speaks and converses with humans in their language.

Cody/Scar’s inner thoughts are human, but he can only express himself as a wolf when in wolf form.

Kay-o is limited to about the mentality of a smart watch dog, or a 4-5 year old child. He does not speak, but growls and uses his booming call to attract attention.

Tell us a bit about your animal characters world.

Farloft lives in Kerth, a mediaeval type world, where he lives companionably with the humans of the kingdom.

Cody/Scar lives in The Realms, a parallel world to ours where things humans think are magical, mythical or paranormal actually live.

Kay-o lives in a scifi world where humans roam through space on a regular basis. His owner, Jake, is a mercenary for hire who always tried to support the good guys in a fight.

Thanks for tagging me Theresa J.

If you would like to read her responses, you can HERE!

And she can be found on Google+ HERE!