Meet Kamna, the Protagonist

I have always had this notion that friendship is the most treasured relationship in all of human existence. I don’t mean a casual acquaintance, but I mean someone who knows everything about you and still chooses to stand by you anyway. I think my idea was inspired by Jonathan and David in the old story found it the book of I Samuel. I suppose that my longing to write Rise of the Dragon’s Heir (originally titled Hope for Tomorrow) the way I did grew out of that longing to know, to believe, that friendships like that can exist anywhere in the universe, among any race and across species. Thus, Kamna and Josef were born. Well, they first came into being on a chalkboard in a fourth-grade classroom, but they took life in my notebooks late at night when the house was quiet.

I first wrote their story in the late nineties. I was too poor to even afford a typewriter at the time. I wrote it by hand. Then I got an electric typewriter at yard sale and typed the story, using correction strips for my many mistakes. Eventually, I got a dial-up computer and brought the story into the digital age.

Kamna was a character that I could “love.” He was the outcast, beautiful (but not realizing it), socially awkward, a little uncertain and insecure and totally oblivious to his own identity. Yet, he had the capacity to physically feel the joys and pains of others, including animals.

Of course, the ultimate challenge for such a person would be to realize that he was destined to become a monster!