Meet: Jericho

When I originally came up with my first book idea in Finding Zen, I knew I was going to be writing about a band of guys. I like reading books in a series, so that’s what I wanted to write. So, I had to decide how many guys and how the band would be put together.

It didn’t take long for me to decide I wanted four guys, and for the four of them to start to show me their identities. Well, I should say three of them. Jericho… he’s been a tough nut to crack.

Originally, I thought he was going to be this super shy guy who had a really hard time in social situations, particularly with women. I was also going to have him originally born in Japan and brought to the US as a kid. But, the more I wrote the other guy’s stories with Jericho in the background, the more he changed and his character became something totally different than who I thought he was.

As you’ll read in Shadow Phoenix, Jericho’s not shy AT ALL. He’s quietly controlled and only speaks when he has something to say, not to fill the noise. He was adopted as a baby and doesn’t know his birth parents, but his adoptive parents were cold and unaffectionate.

He didn’t have a bad childhood, per se, but it was lonely and impersonal. His parents had their own lives and at a certain point, he didn’t really fit into them anymore. He used to spend a lot of time wondering why they even wanted him in the first place.

They’re not supportive of him or his career choices, and because of that he’s not close to them. He doesn’t have any siblings that he’s aware of, and so when True recruits him for the band, he jumps in with both feet. The guys become his brothers and are the only people in the world he lets see the real him. The only people he really, fully trusts.

Jericho has a dark streak to him and it presents itself in more ways than one. It comes out quite a bit in SP, but you’ll get to see a whole lot more of the darkness inside him in Playing Jericho. Unleashing his true self has been one of my favorite things but also some of the hardest words I’ve ever written. But I needed to let Jericho be who he was meant to be even if that wasn’t who I thought he should be, and isn’t that just the story of his life?

Two more members to go… Do you have a favorite yet?