Sayuri incidentally was, I’m afraid to admit, kind of added to the original version of my story at the last minute because I realised I needed another character to do some stuff, so she wasn’t that well developed. I had a pretty good idea of how Jen, Kay and Tenley to be (although they of course have developed a great deal since as well, and I think with the last few rewrites I’m starting to nail the right rhythm and chemistry between them).  Poor Sayuri though, I started writing her only knowing that she was a drummer in The Killer Aqua Bunnies.

Since then though I first started fleshing out her background. Her parents are from Japan, went off to travel the world, ended up settling in Irongate to raise her, and now they run a general store. I say they – Sayuri’s dad thinks he’s in charge, but it’s Sayuri actually keeping them in business. It was important to me to have at least one character whose parents were still alive and who had a more or less healthy relationship with them, because obviously there’s a trope that heroes are always orphans (I should point out that only one parent is definitely dead at this point. Jen’s are just missing.)

More importantly I’ve started defining her personality more. She was always meant to be a little bit more well balanced than the other characters, but I’ve started coming up with a more unique set of quirks for her.