Writer In Motion is starting to wind down, but I thought I’d do a final assessment of my part in the project before a final wrap-up and reflection.

Khalon is a character that’s been swimming around in my head for the past eleven years. I’ve written several bit stories about him and even a partial novel, but it all fell flat because I could never find the right spin. The only two things I knew for sure is he’s fiercely protective of his sister, and he’ll do just about anything to find the mystery woman.

The Blend

In my introduction to the Writer In Motion project, one of the things I wanted to focus on was a blended image to give life to the story. I created a Pinterest board to gather images for the project, but most of these turned out to be focused on Khalon’s immediate vicinity and a nexus point between two universes.

The blend, however, took on a life of its own. Here’s a quick overview of the progress each week:

 

   

 

If you take a look at the second image, the boat is there sort of blended into the background. That was the week I received the prompt, and the peeling paint and rust really caught my eye. Weeks 4 & 5 look nearly identical, but if you look closely, there’s the addition of flames and light across the top to give the image a bit more depth and texture.

The idea behind this image is that it’s really a peek inside Khalon’s mind. Here we have a woman whose face he can’t really see, and she’s the central focus of his thoughts and the image. But built around it is the clock and gears (which is where the dragon’s mind solidifies part of the bond), fire to denote a new ability he has yet to unlock, and the skull is tandem between how often he’s on the edge of death and the fact that he has no idea if his sister is dead or alive.

Each piece of this has meaning to the main character, and the final title of the image pulls all these ideas together into a single concept: Khalon’s tale isn’t over yet.

First lines

Here’s a quick breakdown of how the opening lines for Khalon’s story progressed over the weeks.

• First draft: We called it Ketoshé 12, the blue prison, and once again I’d picked a fight with the wrong asshole. At least he was dead now, but by the blood pouring out of my wound, I wasn’t far behind.
• Self-edited draft: Many years from now, when Khalon stood on the spot of his sister’s execution, he’d recall how the inside of a dragon stomach was still a worse fate than a hole in the head.
• CP-edited draft: Captain Khalon Riyath held a hand to his gut’s ripped flesh, hankering for a shot of whiskey. Blood leaked against his palm. He ignored the pain and stumbled across a wasteland of rock and broken machinery. Shit, he might die today.
• Editor-magic final story: Captain Khalon Riyath held a hand to his gut’s ripped flesh, hankering for a shot of whiskey. Blood leaked against his palm. He ignored the pain and stumbled across a wasteland of rock and broken machinery. Shit, he might die today.

They changed a lot, switching POV style and even focus. Each of these lines gives insight into Khalon’s now-space in a different way, setting the stage for his time on Ketoshé 12, and offering a deeper look into how this rogue spaceship captain views his surroundings. He’s not afraid of a fight, or even death, and he’s definitely willing to take on any form of danger if it serves his ship and protects his crew.

Khalon’s Personality

Even from the beginning of his entrance in my head, Khalon has always been a very quiet, reserved character. He has a love of ancient languages and cultures, and he’s incredibly intuitive when it comes to reading the vibe of a room. Somewhere along the way, someone pushed him into a dark space. He’s become a little colder with strangers, hides his heart under some heavy no-nonsense snark, and he’ll try to convince anyone he can survive just fine with a bottle of whiskey and a gun at his side.

Sometimes I even believe him.

Getting eaten by a dragon won’t slow him down, though. In fact, one of the elements I really wanted to write into this tale is how his close brush with death will shift some of his priorities. Much of Khalon’s life has been about the job and his crew’s survival while he tries to push down the pain of his mother’s death and the truth about his real father. This rogue captain only has one living family member left, his sister, and soon he’s going to receive a very strange video transmission from her starship.

One that will take Khalon and his crew to an entirely different world that was once almost human.

The journey is nearly over

Keep your eyes on my blog later this week as I wrap up my final thoughts about the project and pick a winner for our giveaway.

K.J. Harrowick is a freelance web developer and graphic designer with more than a decade of industry experience on a diverse range of projects. As a child, she fell in love with fantasy worlds like those found in the books of Andre Norton and Mercedes Lackey, which continued well into adulthood with the worlds of Ivan Cat, Rand & Robin Miller, Terry Brooks, Orson Scott Card, and E. R. Mason. She began to world build and create fantasy languages in 2004, and in 2014 it became a full-blown passion to write and publish her own books. Currently she resides in the rainy Pacific Northwest where she works with a broad range of client projects, plots how to destroy her characters’ lives, and occasionally falls down rabbit holes.

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