[Yep, just wanted to get rid of the last journal so it would stop smacking me between the eyes]

It might sound a bit paradoxical to have external origins for your original characters, but nobody is immune to influence and I'm very susceptible to it Many of my resin OCs originated from places outside my own mind, and while I'm cofident that I've warped them enough to call them my own, I thought I'd list the influences from which they stem.

Teal: He comes indirectly from a short story by Poppy Z Brite named His Mouth Will Taste of Wormwood, a truly delicious gory gathering of decadent Louisiana gothicka and deathrock sensibilities. Teal is the long-dead white Voodoo priest with a missing tooth who steals the protagonist's life-force in order to keep living. Poppy Z Brite (who has recently changed his name to Billy Martin) is a cult author from New Orleans who writes fabulous horror stories about gay men, voodoo, and the supernatural. He is now a man, which my brain has trouble processing because his writing, with its voluptuous mix of sex, fantasy and poetry, is so uniquely feminine. In any case, Poppy = LOVE. It is because of his writing that my storyline is set in New Orleans in the late eighties (with Teal wearing the hideous horror-punk fashion of the day). Teal is also influenced by Wednesday 13, one of my favourite musicians, whose reckless disregard for the sanctity of the dead is always amusing.

Clairvius Narcisse: He's actually a real person [link] who is known for being the most recently documented zombie. He was written about by Wade Davis in his book The Serpent and the Rainbow, which is an interesting little book about voodoo, zombies and Haiti. Clairvius's look comes from my favourite zombie film, White Zombie, the first zombie movie ever made (1930s) and to date the most accurate. He's also influenced by Edwardian culture such as the Titanic, and literature for children, including books like The Railway Children.

Wolfe Macfarlane: He comes directly from Robert Louis Stevenson's short story The Body Snatcher which I consider one of the greatest Gothic stories ever written. RLS considered it so heinously gory that he refused to let it be re-published, so it's lucky we have it at all. In it, Wolfe is a brilliant young doctor who thinks nothing of murdering a few people on his way to the top. He's also influenced by Victor Frankenstein, Van Hellsing and Doctor Jekyll (also by wonderful Robbie). He's got a bit of Victor Hugo's Frollo about him. His pre-cyborg look comes from how I imagine Dorian Gray to look- crisp, blond and perfectly glacial.

Felix Fettes: He also comes directly from The Body Snatcher. In the story he's an ambitious young student, but I made him a more scoundrelly ruffian type. He owes a great deal to Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd and again to the music of Wednesday 13. He also gets a certain something from Mr Hyde and the blackguardly villains of Victorian literature found in the works of Charles Dickens and Anthony Trollope.

Selkie: Put simply, Selkie comes from the ocean. That sounds a bit simplistic for a mythical seal-person, but his look, colours and textures all originate from the sea. From the strange pale purple of his eyes to the brownish grey curls in his hair, he's North-Sea-oceanic. It's a very Northern European type of sea he's from; it's the one I've seen most days of my life and lived beside and loved. He comes from Orkney folklore and songs such as The Great Silkie of Sule Skerry. I created him so he wouldn't look out of place jumping through the bow-wave on the Norway-Denmark ferry and I don't think he would.

13: His basic idea comes from Alice in Wonderland, and especially American McGee's version, but mostly he comes from a book called Revenge of the Toffee Monster which is basically an updated, funnier, more hopeful version of Frankenstein, for children. I always loved this book, in which a mad scientist creates a strange animal from toffee, frogs and sponges. He's also based on Frankenstein's monster, of course.

Topaz: It's difficult to say with him. His look comes from grunge fashion of which I'm such a fan, and specifically Kurt Cobain. He's also based on River Phoenix [link] Ricky Rodriguez [link] and the cult Children of God.