Noah Phelps

Noah Phelps is the main character of An Ordinary Fairy, and the story is told from his point of view. Not as first person (which is hard), but in "third-person limited point of view." The reader follows Noah, and sees and experiences only what he feels or thinks. The Harry Potter books are written mostly with this POV, though there are occasional jumps to scenes without Harry at all.

Noah's name was simple to create. I was watching the movie version of Nicholas Spark's The Notebook, and realized the main character, Noah, was much like my Noah. Phelps is a family name - my Grandmother Osborne's maiden name. I googled that name and found out there was a Revolutionary War hero by the same name - the spy who saved the day at Fort Ticonderoga. That was too big a temptation to pass up, so the real Noah Phelps became my Noah Phelps's ancestor. He's mentioned twice in the story and has a most unusual tie-in.

The character Noah was a photographer from the very beginning of my imagining of the story. The very first scene I imagined was of a photographer hiding in the woods and witnessing a fairy woman flying, unbeknownst to her. In the original idea, Noah confronted the fairy with the photos he took, but I dropped that eventually as something that the noble Noah would never do. It was strictly a coincidence that I later took up photography as a hobby during a long period when the story idea lay dormant. That hobby didn't last, but it provided a lot of built-in background when I started writing. So when Noah uses photography, it's a been-there done-that for me, including a little thing called The Gremlin.

Noah is Wiccan. That idea formed much later, actually after I began writing. The existence of aWiccan community, school and store in Hoopeston led to that tie in, and became the reason Noah chose to come to Hoopeston. And that system of belief helped shape the character he became: good at heart, unwilling to harm, and open to the mystical. Which helps when you know a fairy.

Noah grew up on a dairy farm, but I can't remember where that came from. It may have just been something that popped out as I was writing, which can happen when the creative juices are flowing. (Noah and Willow, by the way, visit Noah's parent's farm in Wisconsin in the next novel, An American Fairy.) His farm background led to Willow's nickname for Noah: Cowboy.