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   Florian and Gryphon, who are they?  Well, they're the two main characters of our story and in truth they seem to have created themselves, it was almost that easy.  Their voices sprang up effortlessly as their characteristics developed and since almost the entire novel consists of first-person narrative, all we needed to do was capture their distinct styles of expression.    

   Gryphon came into being first and although I hope the boys' points of view are equally expressed, I still have a particular fondness for our "first born" and consider him the protagonist or hero of our story.  His narrative is straight-forward, poetic but (almost) always rational.  Florian came onto the scene soon afterwards, but almost as if he had been watching from the shadows even before I put pencil to paper.  Well, in a way, he had:  since I was 9 years old I've had on my wall an illustration clipped from one of my mother's German magazines which bears his name.  Sullen, he's a man who expresses himself with as few words as possible and when he recounts events, sentences are incomplete and for him a single word can express everything about an idea.  While Gryphon may speak poetry, Florian lives it (as our reader and good friend Joe put it) for Gryphon is definitely the more human of the two, Florian the more animalistic and spiritual. 

   Speaking of names, Gryphon was named after Griffin Dunne, the film director (for whom Debra has a soft spot), and for those magnificent beasts of mythology.  Older than recorded time, griffins have been stealing livestock, hoarding treasures and getting captured in artwork for eons in cultures all around the globe.  Obviously Florian's name was a "done-deal" the moment I said it aloud to Debra, with the only concern being that perhaps it was too feminine...

   Two men together for three thousand years and instantly at least 1/2 of our test readers assumed they were homo- or bisexual.  While this has never been a problem in the vampire subculture, it's been a point of contention and irritation to me.  Why do people make this assumption?  Is there no distinction between sensuality and sexuality?  It seems that for most there isn't, and while I find this annoying and strange, I'll leave it at that and let each reader make whatever conclusions she or he wants.  It's left intentionally vague in the book, as are the boys' physical features...

   So what do they look like?  Beyond a few essentials, their appearances are left for you to imagine.  Equal and opposite, the book tells you this and a bit more:

 While a lot can be said about characters by describing their looks, beyond these points we felt there was no need to set limits.   

   More importantly, what would they smell like?  Yes, smell, after all that's what a wolf would notice!  Surrounding Gryphon is the aroma of amber and clove-spiced mead while Florian has the pungent scent of lanolin and peat in the air around him.

   Just for fun, how would they prefer to live?  In the book, Gryphon doesn't give much detail about his apartment in Montreal, but we imagine it would look something like the place on the left.  (Or perhaps this would be his Summer "cottage"!)  Florian's place (when he's not sleeping on the forest floor, that is) would be like the room on the right.  Comfort and luxury in contrast to bare necessity.  As for location, you guessed it:  the city rat and the country rat!  A mismatched pair, you're thinking?  That's the beginning of most interesting relationships! 

   Of course, without reading the book, these musings here are without context , but I hope you're able to form an idea of what these two characters are like, and what they mean to us.  They embody our dreams and desires, our positive and negative believes about the world, our human nobility and cruelty... in short, no small measure of ourselves.

The gryphon wood carving? illustration? is from a box,  probably based on a work by John Tenniel.
The photos of Miska and Seneca, two wolves at Wolfpark, are by Monty Sloan.
Room photos by ?  If the photos are yours or are familiar to you, please let me give due credit or remove them as you see fit.

The elegant green graphics on these pages are shareware, courtesy of :

These pages created by Karen Waschinski
Questions?  Comments?  Please e-mail me at woosel[at]total.net