Ghost Rider, Skulduggery Pleasant, and Graveheart: Beating the Nonexistent Allegations

Stepping in front of a bullet that nobody has fired (lol)

Spoiler warning: if you haven’t read HOWLING WILDERNESS, there’s a reveal I’m going to talk about here. That said, if you read this post, you’ll probably want to read the book…

HOWLING WILDERNESS is a fantasy about a race down the Appalachian Trail, set in my Engines universe. Some ride monsters, others ride machines. My main character, Graveheart, wants to win so that he can meet a well-connected man in the winner’s circle—a man who can help him figure out why he’s cursed.

There’s an advantage to having very few people read your independently-published books: if you’re worried about copycat accusations, they’re unlikely to arise.

Ever since I first conceived the character of Graveheart, I assumed someone might examine the similarities between him and two other fictional characters I like, namely Marvel’s Ghost Rider and Derek Landy’s Skulduggery Pleasant. Both of them are walking skeletons with fire-based abilities, as is Graveheart. I am not unaware of this, and in fact am even a considerable fan of the aesthetic.

For Halloween in 2018 I slapped together a budget Skulduggery Pleasant costume, since I had most of the pieces.

Then in 2019, I got a motorcycle and leveled up the “drip” as the kids say, going full-on Ghost Rider.

Graveheart looks like both of these men in a way because he is secretly a walking skeleton with flame-based powers. He hides his condition with a religious mask, given to him by the Old Testament sect known as the Brotherhood of the Brazen Serpent.

People assume he’s just a religious zealot. When he’s attacked by a competitor, the man shoots him in the head, but Graveheart can’t die. In turn, Graveheart kills the man (an eye for an eye) to protect his own secret.

A reveal halfway through the book shows why he keeps himself hidden. He gets torn in half by a monster and drags himself into a river to repair his body underwater.

Later, in a climactic fight with the villain of the story, Graveheart steals the man’s magical pelt. In the scuffle, his own mask comes off and several people see him for what he really is. This has consequences.

While I may have ended up in a similar place, I didn’t immediately set out to write a character who was like GR or SP. I organically backed into it, and when I realized what I had, I wanted to write it in spite of the outer similarities to these guys. Since the process of creating HOWLING WILDERNESS was six or seven years long, these pieces fell into place slowly.

First: Take a skeleton

All the way back in 2013, when I outlined the original Engines trilogy, I planned on having a necromancer conjure up an army of skeletal thralls to attack the protagonists. I established that fire cancels out necromancy in this magical world, so the heroes let their house burn in order to escape, because the thralls couldn’t follow them through the flames.

Later when I conceived of HOWLING WILDERNESS, I thought it would be a cool throwback to have the riders encounter one of these wandering skeletons in the woods, even though it’s fifty years later, and they’re all supposed to be de-animated. I couldn’t make it work based on the rules, so I didn’t include it…initially.

Second: Add fire

Originally the protagonist of HW was going to be Mickey Littleton. The more I worked on the story, the more I wanted to write an ensemble cast. The skeleton idea kept coming back to me and the fire obstacle kept ruining it. Then I thought: what if the skeleton had belonged to a pyromancer in life? Fire wouldn’t work on him the way it works on others.

I started toying with that and I got an idea: a pyromancer’s skeleton absorbs the necromancy and before he knows it, he’s in a stable reaction where he’s animated, aware, and hobbled by amnesia. Ooh, I like that…

Third: From figment to forefront

The more I thought of this character, the more I wanted him and his story to be the focus of HW. I needed a reason for him to be in the race, so I added in a council seat as part of the prize package. Such a thing is not a stretch; famous people have been given political appointments all the time in our country’s history, because fame and public approval often matter more than qualifications. Lewis and Clark got a lot of political perks after their expedition, for example.

By the time I sat down to truly outline the book, Graveheart was the main character and Mickey teamed up with him.

Fourth: That’s gonna leave a mark

The only problem was concealing his condition. I thought about wrapping him in bandages like Joshua Graham from Fallout, but that felt like too much of a reach. This is a world hundreds of years removed from leprosy as a common condition, he’d need a compelling reason to hide his face. I started thinking about religious reasons, and settled on something akin to a dressing as a show of their fidelity. Sikhs and Muslims have turbans, Jews have yarmulkas, nuns have habits and so on. Graveheart has his mask.

And since Engines is an alternate timeline to our own—one that was directly created as a spinoff of ours, and will eventually be “corrected” back into it—things happen there that are echoes of things from here. Astute readers will learn the history of the Brotherhood of the Brazen Serpent in the Mountain West, and realize who they’re supposed to be. ;)

Graveheart and Ghost Rider: Religious Riders

And so it was that Graveheart, like Ghost Rider, is a man on a religious mission even though he didn’t set out to have one. It’s a result of his condition and he needs to pursue the course in order to make it work.

Graveheart and Skulduggery: Fire Bros with Female Comps

It’s also necessary that Graveheart be a pyromancer in order to counter the necromancy worked upon him. There’s a chapter at the end where he regains his memories and he finally understands how he came to be this way, how old he truly is, and whether any family remains. He’s been a walking skeleton for fifty years but he’s much, much older than that.

There are built-in similarities here to Skulduggery Pleasant, a centuries-old sorcerer who is animated purely by magic and spite. Graveheart is held together with a little bit of necromancy and a LOT of bailing wire.

Skulduggery also has a young female apprentice, Stephanie. Unlike Mickey, she’s new to the world of magic, while Graveheart’s companion is fully steeped in it and capable, like him. They team up in the name of a mutual interest, and become friends through trial. While his fire powers are formidable, they’re not limitless, and he uses them in conjunction with his machine. Still, he does manage a few cool tricks, like this flame-assisted jump…

Anyway, that’s why Graveheart looks similar to these other characters, and why his story shares some elements with them. If you read the books you’ll see how they’re different, and in some delusional fantasy of mine they could even have a team-up for kicks and giggles.

Go read HOWLING WILDERNESS. It’s a hell of a ride.