Well, here we are again, and with a special post about the heroine from "The Dragon Within", Kaena!
Here are a few sketches from my lovely artist, Renee, of Kaena and [spoilers] her dragon friend, Iridessa. The full color sketch is in progress [I'm making an artbook to accompany "The Dragon Within"] and hopefully I'll have that soon. :)
Kaena Armae is a spunky 17 year old with a taste for adventure and a reckless boldness that often lands her in trouble. She has an older brother, Jarden, who I'll talk about in a later post, as well as her mother, Elisse Armae, and her father, Dale Armae. They all live quite happily on the outskirts of Opal, which is one of the smallest towns in Amael.
Or should I say, lived?
Hehe. ;)
[One of my favorite TV shows, by the way, is Doctor Who. If you haven't seen it...well, you should. It's awesome.]
Anyway, back to Kaena.
Question: How would you pronounce her name? Kay-nuh or Kay-eh-nuh?
Interstingly enough, her name was originally pronounced "Kay-nuh". Basically, I just wanted to make the name look cooler, so I changed the Y to an E. :)
But then, when my brother read it, he called her "Kay-eh-nuh".
I was like "no, it's..."
But then I realized...I liked Kay-eh-nuh. And it's stuck ever since.
Other interesting facts to follow, but first, some basic information:
Kaena has short, softly curled brown hair that she often pulls up in a loose ponytail to keep off her face. Her eyes are forest green, and she has a smile that most often looks like a smirk. Her skin is tanned from many long hours in the sun, and she's a moderate height and weight for a girl her age.
She loves practicing throwing her knife at wooden targets, and daydreaming that she's in the midst of a great battle while doing so. Her favorite refuge is the forest, where she spends most of her free time, despite everyone's belief that dragons live there. But Kaena thinks it's all just silly stories to get children to behave.
Boy, is she about to be proved wrong.
Anyway, now that you have some basic information about Kaena, here's some more behind-the-scenes insights.
Kaena used to have long wavy auburn hair, until a critiquer groaned that all fantasy heroines seem to have specifically AUBURN hair and "emerald" green eyes. So, I changed it to brown, and I have to say I've liked it better. :) I did keep the green eyes, though hers are deep like forest green, so it's different.
Kaena also used to be an extremely emotional character, until even I annoyed myself with how much she cried, haha.
Her thoughts about dragons also fluctuated a lot in the early stages, from loving them so much she runs recklessly into danger and becomes a fugitive to hating them to finally just laughing at the thought that dragons even existed.
I wish I had my original notes to show you what Kaena was originally like, but that was written on paper and got lost sometime when we moved. It's funny to think of how much the characters and story has changed through these three years; you wouldn't even recognize the original!
And, of course, Kaena's not the only main character in "The Dragon Within". With time, I'll get to the rest of them, and even some that got cut out for various reasons. For now, you'll have to read the book to find out more about Kaena and what happens to her. ;)
