The story behind the creation of this universe is a very unique one for me. A'yen walked through my head in a dream the night of May 15th, 2012. I remember it because it was the same day my sister left for her vacation in France and the chicken drama started. (My sister "farms" for her hobby and while she was gone for three weeks a raccoon killed all seventeen of her chickens. One at a time.)
It sticks out for another reason too. May 16th, 2012, would have been my third wedding anniversary. The date that should have started the best period of my life instead signified the beginning of the worst two and a half years of my life. But that's a story for another time. Because on May 16th, 2012, I started the development process of what turned into My Name Is A'yen. I became a Whovian in this same span of time and inhaled seasons 1, 3, and 4 while she was gone. We hadn't yet seen Vincent and the Doctor when my sis went to the Louvre, so she didn't know to look for him and why his Sunflowers painting should make you cry.
Originally his name was spelled A'yon. He informed me very quickly I was spelling it wrong. I could see him clear as day in my head, but was having a hard time describing his features to my crit partner. He's a humanoid alien. In an effort to show her what he looked like I began combing through every TV alien database I could find. I spent weeks looking for his face. Then it hit me. The Face of Boe, minus the tentacles and wrinkles.
Still wasn't enough though. I needed more to match the vision in my head. While catching Doctor Who reruns on BBC America they kept playing commercials for
Copper. British costume dramas are amazing and it's set during the Civil War in New York City. Must watch! And there I met Tom Weston-Jones and his amazing blue eyes.
If A'yen was human, he'd look exactly like Tom Weston-Jones.
Fae was a lot easier to cast. I knew she had bright green eyes almost too big for her face and black hair. She's Zooey Deschannel, but with green eyes instead of blue. Another writer friend snagged the image I pinned and Photoshopped it for me with the exact correct shade of bright, almost fake, green eyes. Which turned out to be an important clue to her real identity. I knew immediately she was an archaeologist. I wasn't ready to let go of all the work I'd done building myself as a historical romance writer. I'm over that now, but Fae is still an archaeologist. I have thousands of years of history to fill in for A'yen's people and I'm enjoying every second of it.
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