How I First Came To Know Julian

           I would like to begin this week’s blog entries by giving a little bit of information about Julian’s background.  This is how I came to “know” Julian. 

          The year was 2002.  It was sometime in the Spring.  My father and I were having a conversation over pizza.  We were talking about Tricksters because I was taking a class on the subject at the local university.  A trickster is a shape-shifter essentially.  There’s more to a “Trickster” than that, but that's all I really remember about that course.  That was money well spent.  Anyway, my dad made the comment, “Commodus from Gladiator is a trickster.”  Looking back, I can’t really remember how he came to that conclusion, but I think his point was that Commodus was a complex human being.  He was evil because he killed his father and Maximus’ family.  He lusted after his sister, which made him kinda gross.  But he was a pitiful creature really.  All he wanted was someone to love him.  He had depth, I guess you could say.  And this is in large part due to Joaquin’s brilliant acting.

         Shortly after having this conversation with my father, I started to write a story.  I called it “Primal Rage.”  In this story, a 17 year old boy killed his brother.  He had a weird relationship with his sister that was only really hinted at.  And in the end, his sister betrayed him by turning him into the police.  Yes, it was all very Gladiatoresque, only without the gladiators and with a completely different plotline.  I actually pictured Joaquin Phoenix in my head the whole time I was writing about this boy named “Vincent”.  His brother’s name was Anthony.  His sister’s name was Ann.  His father’s name was Adam. 

         I brought the story into my Creative Writing class to have it workshopped.  My professor said, “It’s kind of like a David Lynch film.”   This was clearly another way of saying that the structure was confusing as hell.  And that’s true.  It started with the brother’s funeral, there was a flashback to Vincent running for help, then it’s back to the funeral again, then it’s a flashback to shortly before Anthony’s death, and then it’s a flash forward to the present.  You get the picture.

        I then took the story to the Stonecoast Writer’s Conference in Freeport, Maine in the summer of 2002.  It was workshopped again.  One woman said something along the lines of how she didn’t want me to take this the wrong way but she disliked all of the characters.  The workshop leader said something along the lines of, “Wouldn’t it be nice if Joe (he was Joe now) had some pigeons that he nurtured and cared for?  And his sister could say, ‘Hey Joe, what’s with your fixation on these pigeons?”  And the workshoppers talked about the scene where Julian got up from the table where he’d been sitting with his sister, washed his hands and then left the room.  A woman in the class said, “Maybe he has OCD.”  I made sure to point out that, in fact, he did have OCD.  So I was pleased to see that that I did a good job getting that across.  Then they started talking about what Joe’s deal was.  What was this big secret that Anthony was babbling about just before Joe killed him.  The same woman who mentioned the OCD also picked up on some incestuous undertones between Joe and his sister.  Like me, she had read V.C. Andrews as a child.

         So that brings us to V.C. Andrews.  Around the time that I was beginning my novel, I was obsessed with a character in V.C. Andrews’ book Petals on the Wind. 

         For those who don’t know, Petals on the Wind is the sequel to Flowers in the Attic----V.C.A’s infamous story of greed, betrayal, murder and incest.  The basic premise is that four children are locked in an attic room by their mother in order to keep their existence a secret. The reason their grandfather can't know of their existence is because he never approved of their mother's marriage to her half-uncle.

        In the sequel, there was a danseur named Julian Marquet.  He was this mysterious, dark-haired young man in his 20's who loved the protagonist until the day he died, even as he beat her and took advantage of every pretty young thing who came his way.  The protagonist, Cathy, never really cared for him, even after she married him.  But she had this nagging feeling that he was the dark-haired prince who always waited for her in the shadows when she danced in the attic as a kid.

        I never really liked Julian Marquet the first time I read the books.  He reminded me of Billy Zane’s character in Titanic.  At the time, I preferred Cathy’s brother Chris.  With his blond hair, I imagined him looking a bit like Leonardo DiCaprio.  So of course Julian as Cal was a nuisance to be endured. 

       But when I read through the series at the age of 19 (Julian's age when he was first introduced), I realized that Julian Marquet was kind of sympathetic in a way.  He was a classic wife-beater, but I couldn’t help but feel bad for him.  His parents never loved him.  They forced him into ballet when he was too young to have a say.   There was this sincerity to him at times that was touching.  He had a fascination with used cars.  He liked to fix them up, but he dreamed of getting one brand new.  His ultimate dream was to make it big in the dance world and get a car for every day of the week.  He refers to Cathy as “brand new” because he likes to pretend that she’s a virgin, even though he must have known that she wasn’t.  I came to the conclusion that he knew she was damaged goods, just like him, and that's what drew him to her in reality.  I'm not saying that I would have married the guy in real life, but as a fictional character, he was intriguing.

        I also liked how his whole family was described in vampire terms.  They were Russians with black hair and pale skin and lips that might well have been made of “congealed blood.”  At one point, a character remarks that it’s almost as if Julian is afraid of the sun, what with his lack of any kind of tan.

         The one thing that V.C. Andrews hammered home again and again was that Julian grew up unloved, so in that sense, he did lack the sunlight necessary to thrive, as surely as Cathy and her siblings did when they were locked in the attic room.  His father never encouraged him.  His father, Georges, didn't seem to talk much anyway.   The only times his father would talk to him is when he saw fit to criticize him.  I always sensed that there was more to Julian’s story than what was written on the page, but suffice it to say, Julian was Commodus.  All he wanted was his father’s love.  So both Commodus and Julian became the model of the character I was trying to write.

        The funny thing is that, when I first saw a picture of Joaquin Phoenix when I was about 15 years old, I took one look at him and Liv Tyler together, and I thought to myself, “That’s Julian!”  Little did I know that I would be proven right time and again when, years later, I watched movie after movie where Phoenix played the misunderstood bad guy with the troubled history.  If a movie had been made of Petals on the Wind in the 1990’s, Joaquin Phoenix could have easily played Julian (Rosencoff) Marquet.

           I want to add that sometime around 2002, I had a dream where Cathy went to visit Julian's chain-smoking half-sister (Julian didn't even have a sister, smoker or not, though Georges did seem to come across as a bit of a whore, so maybe he did).  In my dream, Julian's sister revealed all of Julian's secrets.  I don't remember what they were.

        So this is how my character made the transition from Joe to Julian.  At first, I was too embarrassed to change his name.  It would have been easy enough to leave him as Joe.  Nobody hears the name Joe and thinks, “Gee, where did you come up with a name like that for your character?”  But when you name a character Julian, it’s going to attract attention.  And the one thing I tried to avoid for most of my life as a writer is too much attention.  I used to rip up my rough drafts as a kid before throwing them out for fear that my parents would read them and laugh.  I'm sure they would be saddened to know I felt that way.

         There have been some alterations to Julian's character over the years.  For example, he no longer has a brother to kill.  I decided that Julian was a strong enough character that he didn't need a sensationalistic plotline to justify his reason for being.