To the right is pictured a place I recently visited in Guangdong province. It’s a great example of the kinds of places I like to think through writing ideas.

Most of the characters in Aroha are troubled souls. Their strengths and weaknesses are all rooted in a combination of the inner anguish that has lead them to strive for peace as well as the bits of healthy nurturing, good memories and tastes of loving environments they cling to for reassurance as their lives progress. The main inspirations for Tristian, Aroha and Joanna are first and foremost, certain common personality disorder spectra. Using the kinds of personality traits seen in people on these spectra, I fleshed out each character with a combination of imagined childhood and life circumstances, bits and pieces of plagiarised turns of phrase and mannerisms of people I’ve met, and my best guesses at how such personalities might interact with my invented science fiction technological advances and the drawbacks of the future ‘environmentally dystopian’ world I created for the story.

Each of my next few posts will be a more detailed description of the existential and psychological makeup of each of Tristian, Joanna and Aroha.

Maybe you can see aspects of yourself in some of these characters!

In case these people are strangers to you, you can grab copy of Aroha here or at your relevant regional Amazon.