Healing Lance Character Profile - Lance

character profilea warrior's redemptionfantasyevolution of story

May 8

Originally published during my Healing Lance blog tour.

Healing Lance is the first book in the “A Warrior’s Redemption” trilogy. This is a bit of a “pet project” that I am overjoyed to finally reveal to the world.

So... what can I say about Lance? He’s complicated for sure. He’s probably one of the most complicated characters I’ve written so far. He wasn’t always that way.

In my first outline for the story, he was very different. He was more like a jaded, war weary soldier that had done many brutal things and decided to change his ways and seek redemption. While elements of that remained, his personality and his backstory changed drastically. Now, it was more like he was a child awakening from a nightmare. And yet the nightmare was real and all the crimes he’d committed needed to be recognized and he needed to atone. This change allowed me to play with his personality and his perspective a lot more than in the original. He’s simplistic in his thinking and yet also perceptive and interested in the world around him. He was basically numb for the majority of his formative years and only really started to live when he finally rebelled against the warlord that “formed” him.

I have always been interested with the dichotomy between villain and hero. Sometimes the difference is minute and the separating line is thin. Lance is equal parts victim and victimizer. He’s villain and hero. Throughout the trilogy, I explore the two sides as Lance himself tries to understand who he is and who he wants to be. It’s a question, I’m sure, we all ask ourselves at least once in our lives. Who am I? What is my purpose?

Other questions might be: Am I who I make myself? Am I what other people say I am? If others consider you a monster, are you? Do you become what others say you are or are you only what you think you are? I also question the ideas of redemption and forgiveness. I find that the best fantasies are those that revolve around human follies.

I don’t think such questions have any definite answers. It’s all nuanced and complicated, and it was interesting to explore these aspects and themes within the story.

Lance certainly has monstrous qualities. And yet he can be kind and gentle and compassionate. He’s a beast in battle and yet finds childlike joy in cuddling a puppy. He’s a boy that was molded into a weapon that became a man with a lifetime of guilt and the need to redeem himself.

Can we truly redeem ourselves? Can we seek and receive forgiveness if we truly regret our past actions? Are there crimes that can never be forgiven?

I think the answers to such questions are individualized. It would be too easy to say that there were “right” or “wrong” answers. Everyone has their own criteria.

Lance might have started as a rather generic war-weary soldier but he became something more. Writing his story took me on a fascinating journey, and I fell a bit more in love with him with each book. I hope you will to!