Spirit Rider - The Queen, Mr. Cinnamon, and Lady Rosemary

For today only, ladies and gentlemen, I give you three character profiles for the price of one!

Let’s start with The Queen – ruler of Paralex! She’s a bit of a stuffy, though kind sort of person. She’s got the stiff snobbery of the upper classes, but still tries to treat her subjects as equals. Somewhat easily annoyed, she can sometimes be an obstacle for Sam and Grim, but she genuinely means well.

To be honest, across the whole of my writing journey, she’s stayed very much the same, never really altering at all. I’ll admit, every now and then her dialogue can be a touch tricky to write. She’s so royal; she’s above using apostrophised words. It can sometimes make her speech kind of clunky, but I usually catch it.

Now where The Queen can cause difficulties, but means well, Mr. Cinnamon just wants to be a nuisance. He hates Sam and Grim from the onset and makes it his personal business to blame them for everything that’s wrong with the world. He’s snooty, arrogant, and condescending. He’s The Queen’s right hand man, and he’s going to make sure no one forgets it.

Definitely one of my favourite characters to write, Mr. Cinnamon’s lines are always ready and waiting. It’s always fun to try and push the boundaries of how insulting he can be before someone hits him. He’s only ever changed in one regard, his name. He began life with the name Skaro, but I soon realised I’d stolen that from Doctor Who (home-world of the Daleks). Then I still liked how the name sounded so I adapted it to Skartre, which made it into the same written draft as ‘Kyle’. But I still thought that Skartre was a poor excuse for a name, so I threw it out altogether. Instead I decided to try something new altogether. Give him a silly-sounding name to go at odds with his acidic and polished personality. And thus, Mr. Cinnamon was born.

Finally we came to The Queen’s mother-in-law, Lady Rosemary. An old woman by the time of ‘The Royal Problem’, she married into royalty, and thus, managed to avoid most all of the poshness. She’s usually very short and to the point, not believing in tip-toeing around sensitive issues. She was previously head of the Palace Guards, and so is always ready, possibly even raring for a fight.

Again, she’s a character who changed very little over the course of writing. At one point I had her secretly standing guard of a now deleted Artefact. A pair of gauntlets that granted Sam super strength. He was going to get them toward the end of the chapter ‘Royal Trinity’, but I decided to cut them because I didn’t fancy having Sam get two Artefacts in one book.