Introducing Sakehin, a daredevil with delusions of grandeur

 

In this ongoing series of behind-the-scenes posts about the Moth Plateau novellas, we have Sake. He was a very fun character to write, one I deliberately made different from the types of characters I usually write about. In real life, he'd wear out my patience real fast, but in a story...

We've probably all known someone like Sake, someone who blusters their way through life, messing up sometimes--often--but pushing on. And it's never malicious, so we can't help but shrug our shoulders, roll our eyes, and go with it. Some of my coworkers used to talk about a former coworker like this. Every time his name came up, they'd say, "He's such a tool," with this odd sense of fondness underlying it. That's the person I had in the back of my mind here (among other people I've known).

Sake pictures himself as a main character, even when we readers can see that he really isn't, not in the way stories usually lift up main characters for us. So as he blunders from one mishap to the next, and we roll our eyes but watch him with fondness.

All that changes when he ends up leading a group of scholars into the Misbuilt City, an uncanny place of changing geometries and mystery. That story is the one you'll get to discover as you read Time with its Tricks (Amazon | universal links). So check it out!