Tyne is another good friend from my writing group. Due to time zone differences, most of our conversations end up being in the middle of his night and early morning for me. (The fact that I can be awake and functioning that early sometimes bewilders him. But it bewilders me too, so we’re all good.)
Tyne is a 19 year-old writer dude who primarily writes romance of the rainbow with other themes such as paranormal, coming of age, magical realism, and world domination. Having penned over a million words in the last year, he’s in the process of polishing his first book for publication. He spends his time hiding from the world under his desk, except when he has to go play the part of retail worker. Someday he hopes to earn a spot in a specific publishing company and help someone with his novels.
The character I’ll be interviewing is Hugo Kloven. Hugo is the Club President of Phantasmal, a paranormal investigative club at his high school. After struggling with reoccurring and suspiciously baseless anger issues, the once high school football star gave up the life of school politics, scholarship chasing, and university schmoozing, in order to enjoy one filled with things he actually liked – friends, ghosts, and the only person he’d ever love. He stands at a towering an muscular 6’10, has short spiky blond hair, and brown eyes. Boasting a clumsy grin and a heart of gold, he’s a gentle giant standing in the shadow of the wildly successful Kloven family legacy.
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ALT: What is your full name?
HMK: Hugo Maximilian Kloven, it’s nice to meet ya.
ALT: When you walk into a room, what do you expect people to notice first about you?
HMK: Probably how unfortunately brutishly large I am. It’s good for football, to be this huge, but people get intimidated by guys of my stature.
ALT: Did you turn out the way you expected you would? The way your parents expected?
HMK: There was a legacy placed on me when I was born to the family that I was. Kloven is a last name associated with power, success, riches, it’s quite a shadow to stand in. My parents expected me to be a famous football player, my brother expected me to be popular, and I expected myself to stay a lonely bully my entire life. But here I stand, proud to say that I am none of those things.
ALT: What is one physical attribute you’re proud of?
HMK: Once I may have just said my hair, and don’t get me wrong, it’s still awesome. But I have recently come to value my general stature. Having strength like I do, being this large and scary, having hands that can easily crush, is quite the responsibility. But now I know that I can use my strength, towering build, and powerful hands to protect, not harm.
ALT: What is one physical attribute you would change?
HMK: Once I would have said my general build, as I stated before, it was something I perceived as dangerous. But now I’d just love to be a little shorter, just a little. It’s hard to dance with the love of my life because they’re quite short.
ALT: If you were granted three wishes, what would you ask for?
HMK: I would first wish to prolong the life of someone I love who is terminal, even cure them if it was allowed. Secondly, I’d wish for bright futures for the members of my football team, despite their cynical future outlooks. And for my last wish, it might be a little selfish, but I’d wish that the bright high school days spent with my club members would never end, that we could be happy like this together forever.
ALT: What was/is your relationship with your father?
HMK: My father is an actor, I’m sure you’ve heard of him, he’s in everything. But once you get through all his bravado, he’s just an angry bully too. We are similar in that way, at least we were, but that just led us to clash. I say with utter confidence that I’d love to knock him on his back for the things he did to my brother. We don’t get along.
ALT: With your mother?
HMK: My mother is a model. You know that fancy shirt in the closet? That one so nice you never wear it? Yeah, she was the model who debuted that. She walks with the click of her heels and a swagger that can slice through the air but other than that, I don’t know much about her. I can’t recall a normal conversation I have ever had with the woman. We rarely fight, like my father and I do, but we definitely are very distant.
ALT: Siblings?
HMK: I miss my brother every day. I was close to him, but when I was young I felt as if he tried to keep a wall a between us. I wanted so much to learn more about ghosts, the most important thing to him. But he’d always push me away. That was until that one October night when he gave into my begging and took me out to investigate with him. That’s when I lost him.
ALT: In your relationship with others, how do you interact differently with family than with friends? Why?
HMK: I rarely have the displeasure of interacting with my parents, but when one of them happens to be around, we’re very distant. I was painfully close to my big brother before he passed away, but since then I haven’t had much of a ‘family’. I’m very lucky to have an extraordinary group of friends that make up my club at school. I try to be open with them and protect them, but even when I fail they’re always there to pick me up, then carry me up a flight of stairs after I have my head handed to me in a fight.
ALT: How do you fall in love? At first sight? Over a long period of time?
HMK: I have only even fallen in love once in my life. I think I loved them long before I realized it. We had a weird relationship before we were given a common goal but after that, I became aware of my feelings rather quickly. I knew that they were the only person I’d ever love, and that holds true to this very day.
ALT: What are you most proud of in your life?
HMK: I am proud to be Kasper Kloven’s little brother. He was an outcast with the biggest heart, I looked up to him in every way. He looked at life differently and was exactly what I wanted to grow up to be like. When I lost him, I lost my way for a while, but that one thing has never changed. I will always be fiercely proud of my big brother.
ALT: What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done? Why?
HMK: Oh man, I was a bully for so long there are endless answers to that one. But if I had to pick one thing, it was ever raising a fist to anyone in the first place. Or perhaps making that deal with the Demon King. Actually probably that, that caused a lot of problems…
ALT: What are you most afraid of?
HMK: I am deathly terrified of reverting back into a bully, of giving into the anger, of raising a fist to my friends. They trust me to protect them, not harm. It’s always in the back of my mind, what if I’m not a good guy, what if I hurt them, but I do my best to keep pushing forward despite that fear.
ALT: What’s the most important thing in your life? What do you value most?
HMK: My club and its members. Phantasmal is my home, the members are my family. I could never let anything happen to them, they are my most valued thing. I also happen to be madly in love with one of them.
ALT: What do you consider your greatest achievement?
HMK: It’s somewhat of a spoiler, so I’ll censor to the best of my ability. I am most proud of the way I conducted myself in the wake of finding out someone very close to me didn’t have much time left. I told myself I’d hold it together, that I’d keep smiling, so that they could have the best time in their remaining days. It was hard, nearly impossible, to smile through that agony, but I did it. And no matter how long I live, no matter what I do, that will always be my greatest achievement.
ALT: What is your greatest regret?
HMK: I do have a lot of those. As much as I regret every time I gave into the anger, every punch I threw, every time I was the bad guy, there is one thing that haunts me more than all of that. Had I not begged my brother to take me out to look for ghosts that night, he wouldn’t have lost his life.
ALT: Biggest trauma?
HMK: Does watching my brother be annihilated by a car right in front of me at ten-years-old count?
ALT: What is your motto?
HMK: I stole it, but: Life’s too short to be so sad.
Characters are the property of the authors. Used by permission.