Today, I wanted to establish another common blog type that I like to see when surfing the web for stuff I like. "Did You Know" is going to feature non-spoilery information about my books, hobbies, and really my life in general. Like my Character Profile blog, I'll gauge the popularity from views and comments, so get back to me if you want to share a similar experience or amusing anecdote. As always, enjoy!

Today's blog features interesting tidbits about Arawn's Quest. Did you know?...

1) When my friends came up with the original idea for the story, none of us had seen or read The Black Cauldron. Apparently that series also features a character named Arawn, though he's an evil sorcerer king. One of my first proof readers pointed this out to me and suggested I change the name to avoid confusion. We decided against it as the characters are wholely separate and the name Arawn was rather common back in Ireland's past, like Aaron in the US, so I wasn't worried.

2) Katrina, Emily and Rich are the names of two of my nieces and one nephew, respectively. They are siblings. When naming the characters, I didn't realize I had done that until after the book was ready to print. I just thought the names sounded good together, but couldn't place why.

3) None of these characters were originally part of the story, but we thought it would fit to add them because Arawn obviously isn’t very familiar with the world beyond his forest (he’s only seen maps from 500 years ago) and Diaden doesn’t want to be relied upon to lead the xendauni everywhere in case he has to leave.

4) The vast majority of named secondary characters all share their names with somebody I know or with some character that person played in a game at one point in the past. Most of them were on purpose.

5) There is a Black Forest in Germany, though I'm not sure if the trees there draw magic from anything.

6) We came up with the first five chapters of the book after playing a D&D game in which my friend was Arawn Segomo. Before that, we didn't really know how to start everything. This was when we decided how Arawn got free and who helped him do it. This was also when we established the link between lycanthropes and xendauni.

7) Originally, Diaden was going to die and come back later in the series, but we all agreed that was far too similar to Gandalf from Lord of the Rings, so we scrapped that idea.

After reading through to the end, are there any questions about the world or its people? Let me know and I’ll get back to you. Thank you for reading.