These are just fun facts, behind-the-scene, and background stories about everything in the Legend!

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-This story took five years to finish. It was back in 2012, late of eighth grade, I began writing this book. That summer, I reached a really bad Writer's Block and almost totally abandoned the book. After some inspiration, I scrapped the old versions and began the new ones in high school. After some more Writer's Block and excessive homework, I finally completed the story five years later in September 2017!

-The original Legend had several differences compared to now. Had I completed it before rebooting it, it most likely would've been totally different than it was today, but luckily, I stopped the story at the beginning of "Darker Blood."

-Joseph Luno's original name was "Jonathan." Back then, I didn't even think to give the characters a last name. After my first Block however, when I threw away the old drafts and went to rewrite them, I just could not remember the name "Jonathan!" I forgot my own character's name! Even more embarassing, when I began the book again, I settled on renaming him "Joseph," but coincidentally, one of my new friends at the time wanted to read this story, and his name was also Joseph. That almost looked as if I purposely named the character after him. 😑

-Drake was sort of a different character back then. He was supposed to be a regular vampire, who was Nathan's age, with immunities against all vampire-killing methods. One day, I was watching "Blade: Trinity" (if you don't know what Blade is, it is an older,  underrated Marvel movie trilogy about a vampire-hunting vampire. The first and third parts are the best, imo...). It turns out, my character sounded a lot like the main antagonist in that movie: a vampire with immunities, and his name also happened to be Drake, short for "Dracula"...So, this sparked an idea in my mind, and I made some interesting changes in my book...

-Natalia Blackwood was never supposed to be a character in the incomplete version.

-Another reason I had to reboot the stories, was because I made "Darker Blood" the third installment, when I forgot I had plans for Nathan to meet the Greek gods (like he did in "Operation: Underworld").

-This book has heavy inspirations from two of my childhood series, one's a video game that I intended to base Nathan from, and one I didn't realize the similarities until last year (four years later). Nathan is based on the iconic video game character, Dante from the Devil May Cry series.

Dante Sparda is a demon half-blood who has a resentment for demons because his parents were murdered by them, right in front of him at a young age. His father, Sparda was a demon lord, but after he met Dante's mother, he wanted nothing to do with being evil anymore. When Mundus, his leader found out he left his army for a human, he sent demons to his family to deal with them. Little did he know, Dante survived that day, along with his twin brother Vergil. Dante and Vergil took different paths from that day; Dante became a hunter for demons and Mundus learned of his survival.

Vergil however, embraced the fact that he was a demon and became power-hungry, as he always felt the need to become stronger than his brother (sounds like Fiona a bit, huh?).

Anyway, along with somewhat similar stories, Nathan's guns-and-blade(s) fighting style came from Dante as well, along with his ability to heal fast, and his ability to transform into something stronger. Differences: Dante has one blade, but more weapons than Nathan. Nathan can just create more guns, but Dante can summon necessary weapons, including powered gauntlets, various guns, blades, and a longer list that you can look up yourself. 😆
Dante has a "Devil Trigger," in which he turns into his demonic side and becomes faster and stronger. He refuses to do this, because again, he hates even being a demon, and in transforming, he's basically embracing it.

Nathan's form (The Black Phoenix) is sort of like this, but instead I made it a separate ancient entity. However, I described it to be as powerful as Dante's last, and rarely used form, "Majin Dante," which is more demonic than the Devil Trigger.

A final major difference, Nathan is a lot more serious than Dante. Dante is more sarcastic and laid back whether he's fighting or talking, and boasts a certain style whenever he does either. If anything, style is a key component in the video games (think, at the end of a level, they grade you on "Style," and to get an "A," you have to be a pro at those games)!

Let me show you how much more stylish our Dante is than Nathan...

This is the rebooted Dante, which was received badly, but there were good moments in the game.

Where's your bad boy now, Wattpad? 😂

-While typing this, I realized Vincent Blackwood also resembles Nero from Devil May Cry.

Although slightly confirmed, Nero is believed to be the son of Vergil (now in Hell), because even though Nero can't perform the Devil Trigger, he has a similar entity that assists him, and it greatly resembles Vergil's Devil Trigger form. Now, obviously Vincent isn't Fiona's son, but remember, Vincent's powers are filtered down Fiona's curse that she gave him in the womb, just like Nero used to believe he was cursed, but now uses Vergil's powers for good.

-Now, another unintentional inspiration for this story is "Avatar: The Last Airbender." I realized this last year, when I was making the concept photos for the cast of the book. I noticed that Nathan has a striking resemblance to Prince Zuko.

Like Nathan, Zuko is a banished prince, with a sister who embraces her evil and hates her brother (just like Fiona). Speaking of which, Fiona also resembles Zuko's sister, Azula.

In addition, like the show's main character, Aang, Nathan also has an ancient power within him that he needs to learn to control before the end of the world. For Nathan, it's The Black Phoenix. For Aang, it's the Avatar State, remember?

Again, this was unintentional, but hey, I loved this show, so I'm happy it wound up this way!

-When I created Joseph, he never had some sort of "family curse" to turn into a werewolf, he was actually just a regular werewolf guy. 😂
But the improvement came later when I realized his irrelevance earlier on. You see, if Nathan and Joseph were to fight to the death, both of them at 100% conditions, Nathan would end the fight with Joseph immediately. This made Joseph look a lot weaker than I had intended, making him some sort of "sidekick" character. That was when I realized, Joseph has fought and beaten Drake countless times growing up. Nathan can also beat Drake with the same amount of difficulty Joseph would have. If the difficulty is the same for both of them (without Nathan's transformation), then that means Joseph and Nathan should be matched in strength, correct? Yes, and I'm glad I realized this, because there was a point where I could've even gotten rid of Joseph for his irrelevance, and he would've just been a second banana who's only good for comic relief, especially when he was supposed to be "a regular werewolf." So I fixed him up, gave him a powerful spirit too (nothing crazy powerful though), and he was back on par with his best friend, removing his "sidekick" title that I never wanted.

-In "Soundtrack," Jesus' and Jehovah's theme songs have nearly the same song, but I just changed the choir in Jehovah's to an oboe-...or a violin (I think) for Jesus'. Sorry, it's been a while. 😅

-The surname "Blackwood" was supposed to be a metaphor on the fact that Nathan was banished from Hell, and like burnt wood, he was tossed about and damaged. And, as a Phoenix would, he would rise from it's ashes, but the Phoenix is of good origins, which is why Nathan is a "Black Phoenix"...I hope that made sense!

-In "Burning Tears-Chapter 3," Geo meets with the sun gods, Roman god Sol and Greek god Helios. You'll notice from then on, there isn't much more mention of the Roman gods. That's because later on, I discovered that  the Romans and Greeks worshipped the same gods, just dubbed them differently. By that point, I didn't wanna have to go back and revise the whole thing- and besides, I liked the fact that they were separate entities, especially since Greeks and Romans didn't get along too well back then.

So for the purpose keeping this understandable since there wasn't so much focus on it, I myself have changed that bit of the religion greatly, and will keep it as so just to further push the diversity in this book. Therefore, Roman and Greek gods are familiar of one another in the story, so just consider them alternate versions of each other. Kinda like how police are police, but have different uniform themes and department names depending on their city/state.

-In addition to the last bit of trivia, Allah and Jehovah are treated as separate entities as well- but that is because they are. From what I researched (and if there's anyone who practices that is reading this, your confirmation would help), the Islamic teachings are very strict on differentiating Allah from Jehovah. Allah is the only god within their religion, and no other one exists. Not even so much as "Jesus" counterpart in their religion.

However, in this story, I've done a lot of rule bending as far as making these deities exist with one another, which is why I made Allah seem a bit more isolated from the other gods, so that it does seem He doesn't associate Himself too much with Jehovah- at least until the world's fate is put at risk, and all religions have no choice but to come together.

-In "Burning Tears-Chapter 3," we also meet Ralos, Guardian of The Sun, who is Geo's superior. If you read his name backwards, it's "Solar."

-I had other plans of introducing Natalia in the story. Originally, I wanted her curse to have made her into a banshee, and rather than having Nathan hear voices in his head, a banshee was going to appear at his side whenever he awoke from his slumber. Problem with that was, I learned that banshees only appear when someone is going to die- and I did not want to kill anyone anymore! Nonetheless, this banshee was going to be a symbol for Natalia "screaming" for her son to set her free.

-Notice, I never revealed the setting of the story, just somewhere in the USA. Originally, I had them live in Denver, Colorado, since they have a lot of forests there (which in case you haven't noticed, there's quite a few of them in this book). But, in the original arch, I realized I actually had the demographics of the city wrong, so to save myself from doing too much research (especially in a city and state I don't even live in), I made up a town and city! To add to the mystery, I even made sure I utilized some of the characters' flight and teleportation abilities to get to places faster, because when everyone met in Mississippi in "Burning Tears-Chapter 20," had I said something like, "Three Hours Later," it would suggest that the characters live in a state three hours away from Mississippi (which makes it easier for the readers to figure out where they lived, when really, I didn't even think that far, so your time would've been wasted! 😂).

-In "Epilogue," when Sonic and Nathan meet again, Sonic makes a reference (not a fourth-wall break) to Nathan's "Legend," whereas Nathan references a "Saga." The story "Chaos Heroes" was formerly "Sonic & Friends Saga," but I didn't change it because it's still a good scene with a good callout that refers to the crossing over the two books (*cough, cough*, "The Final War" 😏).

*That's all the trivia folks! If you have any lingering questions, I'll be happy to answer them for you here!