I have a couple of fictional characters on hand who weren’t able to find jobs in any of my books. So I am advertising them here, for employment by any aspiring fantasy writers who may wish to give them work.
Gombo the Magnificent is a wizard whose magic mostly produces unintended, and unappreciated, consequences. His love potion grows hair on your furniture. His hex makes his enemies stronger. And don’t even think about asking him to cast a spell to make you lose weight. The last customer who tried that wound up with two left feet and a bottomless ashtray.
Dr. Fretorius, an unemployed sage, is the world’s foremost expert on the philosophical writings of Wing Chow Foon, who was executed by his emperor for turning his students into useless idiots. Dr. Fretorius became unemployed when this began happening to his students at the university. Obviously a fantasy character: in real life, he would have been promoted to department head.
Beetrice Blotter rebelled against her parents’ plan for her to follow in their footsteps as professional beekeepers and turned instead to keeping wasps. It’s actually rather dangerous to approach her property. Her pride and joy is a wasps’ nest the size of a medicine ball, inhabited by a multitude of the most aggressive wasps anyone has ever seen. Her inability to get her wasps to produce marketable honey has left her with an obsession to achieve this goal no matter what.
All three have expressed the desire to appear in a fantasy novel and a willingness to do it without being paid. So if you mean to write such a novel, and have an opening suitable for any of these three characters, please feel free to give them a chance to show what they can do.
I love ’em, especially, well actually, especially all of them. These guys could keep Ryon’s head spinning for quite a while. Maybe you should do a comic relief follow-on the The Throne and put these pitiful guys to work. 🙂
Or we could write biographies of these characters who exist in real life. But alas, there are so many to choose from. Perhaps we could put each character into its own pile of…and see who rises to the top! On top of the others, of course – the only way to get to the top is to climb over the pile of…that shares their “ideology.”
Good ideas!