The Hardest Character to Write
In the early days of writing the series, the hardest character for me to write was Erin.
His optimism and relentless positivity were drawn from a close friend of mine—someone who truly believes in the best of people. And while I love that in real life, trying to channel it onto the page was a different beast altogether. I’m not, by nature, an especially optimistic person. I lean toward characters who are guarded, cynical, or shaped by grit. So writing from Erin’s perspective often felt like trying to wear someone else’s skin. That’s why, in the first two books, there are so few scenes told through his eyes. I just couldn’t get into his head. At least, not in a way that felt honest.
That started to shift in Book Three. Erin’s voice changes as he becomes more jaded, more cynical. Life punches holes in the beliefs he once held so tightly. And while that wasn’t a deliberate ploy to make him easier to write (this isn’t torture your characters for convenience hour), it did help. As his world falls apart, as the very things he believed in and built his career around are twisted into something monstrous, I finally felt like I understood him. The shift didn’t make him less Erin. It made him human.
While he was always more than just the gay best friend of the main character to me, it was a relief to see him come into his own, even if the path he’s starting to walk is a dark one. Because Book Three is only the beginning of that path.
There’s a moment in Book Three that captures this beautifully. Akiko tells Erin, “You are Frankenstein, and this here is your monster.” That line sums up so much of Erin’s arc. And that trajectory, of brilliance, burden, and regret, was something I had planned from the very beginning.
Alongside this, one of the biggest shifts in Book Three is the introduction of flashback scenes from Erin’s perspective. These dive into his past, particularly his experience navigating his mother’s illness. Writing those scenes was the first time I truly felt in sync with him. His grief, his helplessness, his quiet determination—not only were those emotions I could relate to, they were pulled directly from my own experience.
My mum has the same rare lung disease, Lymphangioleiomyomatosis (LAM), that Erin’s mother has. This was a deliberate choice. And although Erin’s journey isn’t identical, the emotional blueprint is one I know intimately. While many of the scenes are fiction, more than one mirrors my own life beat for beat.
Those flashbacks gave me a way into Erin that didn’t rely on shared personality, but on shared pain and love. And oddly, that unlocked everything else. Suddenly, his choices made sense. His heartbreak mattered. His arc didn’t just feel necessary—it felt inevitable.
Looking back, I think what made Erin so difficult to write in the beginning is exactly what makes him powerful by the end. He started as someone I didn’t fully understand. But over time, as life carved deeper lines into both of us, we met somewhere in the middle. I stopped trying to force his optimism, and started letting it change—grow, crack, deepen.
In the end, Erin taught me something I wasn’t expecting: that hope isn’t a default setting. It’s a choice. Sometimes a very costly one. And writing someone so different from me pushed me out of my comfort zone in a way I didn’t know I needed.
He may have been the hardest character to write. But now? He might be the one I’m proudest of.