C. Kopf asked Carrow Brown:

What inspired you to write the characters of Ghost and Silence?

Carrow Brown Ghost is the result of my desire for a strong female lead who gets herself out of her own mess and a debate I had with my husband about how someone who is hundreds of years old would behave. I threw in Norse mythology and Lovecraftian horror for fun and she turned out pretty good.

Silence was not supposed to be a character. He just happened one day after a particularly bad week at work. Originally, he was a brooding magical sword who could only convey feelings but wasn’t chatty or demanding things like stabbings or participation awards. I wasn’t sure if I was going to keep the changes until I took the pages to my writing group for feedback. The group ended up loving Silence and demanded he have a stronger role in the story. A bunch of rewriting later, Silence became a thing.

I can’t talk about Ghost and Silence creation without mentioning Vainya as well. You see, when Silence took shape in my mind, I saw that he was the ID of the human psyche—instincts, desires, wants. Ghost easily fell into the role of the Ego—the part of a person which balances the desires and logic. So who was my Super Ego? Who was the person grounded in logic and moral choices? That became Vainya, Ghost's overseer and Master of the Well of Knowledge. I became very attached to this concept and reworded a lot of the dialogue in my story to reflect this without outright telling everyone what going on. Super nerd moment for me.

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