Hey there readers! We’re taking another little break from the fiction this week. Today’s post, though, is in regards to the stories I have been sharing here. I have now put two stories centering on the character Rokkoh here, from two different time periods in his life. In the first one, Rokkoh and the Princess, our hero is older, roughly in his late 30s or so. When I initially wrote this piece, I had based his physical appearance on an old World of Warcraft character, who I then adapted in a character creator called HeroMachine. In both of those, Rokkoh had been slightly older with a grey goatee and a bald head. When I put him on the page, I chose to darken his facial hair but keep the hairless dome. However, looking back, I realized there seemed to be a touch of repetition amongst characters.
For those who have known me for a long time, I had been working on a supernatural mystery/thriller years ago. It resulted in a novella called The Blade and the Bullet, which has since been rebranded as The Cross Chronicles. (For those interested, click here to read the ancient first draft over at Booksie.) In it, we follow vampire Daniel Cross as he tracks down a killer in Seattle. Like Rokkoh would later be, Daniel is bald. His physical appearance had been based on a musician I have liked for a little few years short of two decades. (God, has it been that long?).
Can an author have two characters from two different worlds have similar appearances or characteristics? Absolutely. There’s nothing wrong with it. One could argue, depending on the author’s opinion, that the two characters are reflections of each other. That being said, I don’t know if I want that for Rokkoh and Daniel. Primarily, this is because Daniel already has a reflection in a planned project.
Going forward, any Rokkoh story set around or after Rokkoh and the Princess will feature our paladin as having hair. Any future versions of this novella will be updated to accommodate this change. I wanted to make this post to hopefully help avoid any possible confusion when we return to that segment of the timeline.
Thank you for reading this update post, and have a great day!
Tyler Gohde 