Reader Question Day #70 – why did Caina go blonde?

SD asks what has, so far, been the most common reader question about GHOST IN THE ASHES:

What gave you the idea to make Caina blonde though?

Note that the answer to this question CONTAINS SPOILERS for GHOST IN THE ASHES.

Within the terms of the story, it was purely a practical method of disguise. Despite Caina’s best efforts to remain anonymous, she has been at the center of some very tumultuous events, and so certai nvery powerful people are starting to have an inkling of who she really is – and some of those powerful people want her dead, quite badly (like Decius Aberon, for one, who would kill her simply to spite Corvalis). Or Lord Haeron Icaraeus’s former supporters – using her old disguise as “Countess Marianna Nereide” would have been an invitation to disaster. So dyeing her hair was an obvious and easy way to help disguise her true identity. In addition, she needs to disappear into the disguise of “Sonya Tornesti” for some time, and the dye helps with that.

For me as a writer, it was fun to do because for all her pragmatism, Caina is just vain enough to be annoyed at having to change her hair color (not that this stops her from doing it). Also, one of the subplots of GHOST IN THE ASHES is how much Caina unexpectedly enjoys her disguise as Sonya Tornesti, and how she fears it will subsume her. The hair dye was a good physical symbol of that.

So that was where the idea originated.

Several people write to ask:

When is GHOST IN THE MASK coming out?

Before the end of the year. Ideally the end of September or sometime in October, though as ever we are subject to the vagaries of life and the weather. I’m reasonably satisfied with my outline for the book, and hope to start it as soon as FROSTBORN: THE GRAY KNIGHT is finished.

-JM