If you needed an old Sage with a flowing white beard and tomes of forbidden lore, that was not Leon. If you wanted to see a fabulously dressed courtier working to bring political revolution, that was not him either.
Leon was the one to call when your magic mirror broke.
From the unpublished novelle The Odd-Job Wizard, Loren D. Selby
Unlike Celabramar who grew from a doodle, Leon the Wizard is was inspired by a real person, my late father Dwayne Leon Selby. The character is not a one-to-one translation and has developed his own mannerisms and quirks. However, his core concept, a highly educated man with a knack for a repair, a blue jacket, and odd social blind spots, has my father's fingerprints.
No, Dad did not practice magic or befriend dragons. He just loved learning and developing new skills. He was also well educated, a Bachelors in geology, and only worked in that field a handful of year during my life-time.
Having the skills and certifications doesn't assure you work. Dad also taught me that there is no such thing as a job 'beneath' you. Work doesn't care who does it as long as it gets done.
Leon's repair skills are strongly inspire by Dad's hobby of learning new things - car restoration, bee keeping, sew-machine repair, baking, small part fabrication, and wine-brewing. Dad could fix nearly anything, and what he couldn't he would find a book or manual for future study.
Another thing Leon took from Dad was being aware that you can accidentally scare people just by existing. My father had an intense personality, a booming laugh, and a love of debate. He also stood over six foot tall, with a barrel chest and a thick neck. People regularly thought he was a former high-school jock. Between his physical build, unfortunately shaped eyebrows, and some facial nerve damage, Dad's non-verbal cues were often misread.
Leon isn't physical threatening. However, he knows that it is all to easy for people to come to fear magic-users. He hides his frustration with his co-workers behind a mask of professionalism. He takes a walk to settle his temper. He takes every chance he gets to be honest about his powers and limits. He works hard to not be the typical aloof Wizard.
Ironically, this level of familiarity and permissiveness backfires on Leon. It often did on Dad. In the real world, people would take my father's desire to be liked and abuse his boundaries. When you hide or mask your frustration, people don't realize they are making you uncomfortable.
In The Odd-Job Wizard, the townsfolk become used to Leon's services. Some of this is driven by the situation. They live in a town that's falling apart. However, there's a large gap between expecting someone to led a hand, waking someone up to demand instant repair work. They fixate on “what can Leon do for me?”
The current draft's opening features Leon being woken up by an unpleasant neighbor because the hot-water tank needs work. When Leon finally gets a paying project from Celabramar, the cracks in these toxic relationship widen. There is a difference between being valuable and being appreciated.
All of this makes Dad's middle name, Leon, fits the fictional character well. Leon means 'lion' in many languages. Lions have complicated relationships with humans. One one hand, they are easily demonized as threat to our bodily safety. On the other, we've seem so many videos of them behaving like big goofy cats that we forget to respect their boundaries.
On the journey to publication, I fear that the name, Leon, may be a problem. My own name Loren, has many of the same letters in it. However, I would honestly rather get a pen name than change the character's name.
Leon the wizard is a work of fiction. Dwayne Leon Selby was a father who valued creativity. While he is no longer present to read The Odd-Job Wizard, he read and commented on many of the earlier story lines. He would have loved how the character has developed and laughed himself silly over the idea of a wizard building a hot-air balloon out of patchwork fabric and leftover wallpaper.
