Who I Pictured While Writing BREATHE 🖤

The faces, personalities & fictional characters that inspired Aria and the Cross brothers

One of my favorite questions to ask authors is:

Who did you picture while you were writing them?

Because I almost always have someone in my head.

But here’s the thing—none of the characters in BREATHE  have one exact face claim.

They’re Frankensteined together from actors, characters, personalities, aesthetics, and whatever else my brain decided belonged together. 😂

Someone’s hair. Another person’s mannerisms. The energy of a completely different fictional character.

Eventually all those pieces stopped feeling like inspiration and just became Aria, Aleric, Damien, and Kaelis.

So, with a little over a month until you get to meet them yourselves, here’s a peek inside my head while I was creating the characters of BREATHE.

And yes, my lifelong vampire obsession is about to become painfully obvious.

• 

ARIA

Visual inspiration: Maiara Walsh

When I picture Aria, I’ve always pictured someone similar to a younger Maiara Walsh.

The warm coloring. The curly hair. The naturally beautiful look.

Aria has long honey-brown hair that’s somewhere between curly and wavy, doe-brown eyes, lightly freckled tan skin, and a softness to her appearance that fits her naturally quiet personality.

I remember seeing Maiara Walsh for the first time on Cory in the House, and then she appeared again in Season 2 of The Vampire Diaries. When I started imagining Aria, Maiara was always the face that came to mind. She has this undeniable, natural beauty that felt perfect for Aria—except Aria has never really seen that beauty in herself.

But personality-wise?

There’s a little book-Bella Swan in her.

And I specifically mean book Bella, because there’s something about Bella’s intelligence and internal thought process that I wanted for Aria.

Aria is smart.

Like full-ride-to-college, environmental-scientist, genuinely-loves-data smart.

But she’s not someone who needs everyone in the room to know it.

She’s a bookworm. She’s observant. She’s quiet. She spends a lot of time inside her own head.

She’s much more likely to watch what’s happening around her than demand everyone’s attention.

Of course, putting a woman who would very much like to quietly observe the world into the path of three ancient vampires makes that slightly difficult.

Sorry, Aria. 😂

ALERIC

Okay.

This man is a Viking.

That was one of the foundations of Aleric from the beginning.

And if you’re familiar with True Blood, you can probably already guess where some of this came from.

There is absolutely some Eric Northman in Aleric.

Not because I picture them as identical, but because I wanted that same kind of presence.

The height. The attractiveness. The authority.

That feeling that when this man enters a room, you don’t really need anyone to explain who’s in charge.

Aleric is the eldest Cross brother, and I wanted him to feel like the leader before you even knew much about him.

But then I mixed that with something completely different:

Carlisle Cullen.

Specifically movie Carlisle.

Give me the hair. Give me the doctor aesthetic. Give me the composed, controlled man who has absolutely no business looking that good in a medical setting.

Because Aleric is also a physician.

He’s intelligent, controlled, protective, and has spent a very long time being the person everyone else relies on.

Aleric has a dark past—one that was practically designed for him from birth. But something happened during his early years as a vampire that fundamentally changed the way he chose to live his very long life.

You’ll learn more about that in Book Two, so I’m keeping my mouth shut for now. 👀

While Aleric may have some of Eric Northman’s commanding presence—and yes, occasionally finds humans incredibly insufferable—his personality leans much more toward Carlisle. He’s calm, controlled, compassionate, and deeply protective. He chose to stop feeding on humans and instead devoted his life to healing them as a physician, almost as though caring for others could somehow make up for the things in his past. That gentleness and patience beneath someone so powerful is a huge part of who Aleric is.

So give me Eric Northman’s Viking looks and natural leadership, but Carlisle Cullen’s compassion, restraint, and desire to do good, and you’re getting pretty close to my Aleric.

DAMIEN

Damien might be the most dramatic combination of inspirations because apparently I decided one brooding vampire wasn’t enough. 😂

Looks-wise, if Matt Bomer and Luke Evans—specifically Luke Evans in Dracula Untold—had a baby, you’d be getting pretty close to the Damien I see in my head.

Dark hair. Striking features. Leaner than his brothers. Beautiful in that darker, almost intimidating way.

But Damien’s personality is where things get more interesting.

When I write him, I picture a lot of Anthony Bridgerton, specifically Jonathan Bailey’s portrayal. Damien is naturally quiet and spends far more time observing than speaking, but when he does speak, there’s that same controlled, commanding intensity. The restraint. The formality. The way he can communicate an entire argument with one look.

And it fits him particularly well because Damien actually comes from the same general time period as Anthony Bridgerton. There are pieces of that world still buried in the way Damien carries himself, even centuries later.

But then there’s the part of Damien that Anthony definitely doesn’t cover.

The darkness.

Damien literally wields shadows, but there’s also a darkness inside him. He carries an enormous amount of internal turmoil that he keeps buried beneath all that control. There are parts of himself he doesn’t particularly like, things he hasn’t completely made peace with, and reasons for that darkness that I’m deliberately not explaining yet.

You’ll understand Damien much better in Book Two. 👀

That’s where Eric Draven from The Crow comes into his inspiration for me. Not necessarily as a direct personality match, but for that haunting, gothic darkness—the feeling of a man who seems almost at home among the shadows because he’s carrying so many of his own.

So give me Matt Bomer’s beauty, Luke Evans in Dracula Untold for that dark vampire look, Anthony Bridgerton’s mannerisms and restrained intensity, and The Crow for the shadows and inner darkness…

And somewhere in the middle, you get Damien Cross.

KAELIS

Kaelis was actually one of the first characters I had mapped out when I started creating BREATHE.

I knew I was writing a dark romance. There would be trauma, vampires, danger, and plenty of brooding—especially from a certain shadow-wielding brother—so I knew pretty early on that I needed someone who could bring some light back into the story.

That became Kaelis.

His human life has always given me a little bit of Noah from The Notebook energy. Kaelis was born in the early 1900s and turned in the 1930s. He comes from a life where hard work was simply part of who he was, and even after all these years, that part of him never really disappeared.

He’s a worker. A doer.

If he loves you, there is very little he wouldn’t do for you.

Looks-wise, I’ve always pictured something close to book Emmett Cullen.

Dark brown hair. Strong jaw. Broad shoulders. And enough muscle that you look at him and think, Yeah, he could probably bench-press a car.

Which, considering he’s a vampire, isn’t entirely out of the question. 😂

But then you get to know him.

Personality-wise, there’s definitely some Joey Tribbiani in Kaelis. He has that humor, warmth, and genuine care for the people around him. He loves to make people laugh, and he’s usually the brother bringing some much-needed levity when everything around them gets a little too dark.

And, naturally, he loves food.

Kaelis doesn’t need human food to sustain himself, but that’s certainly never stopped him from cooking it—or sampling everything while he does. 😂 Food is something he genuinely enjoys, and cooking is another way he takes care of the people he loves.

That’s really the heart of Kaelis.

He takes care of people.

His humor and easygoing personality aren’t there because he has nothing darker underneath them. Kaelis has lived a very long life. He’s made mistakes. He’s struggled. There are things he’s had to learn to control.

He simply chooses to bring warmth with him anyway.

And that’s also why calling him the “golden retriever” of the Cross brothers only tells you about half of him.

Because there’s a little Jamie Fraser in there too.

Kaelis can be charming. Funny. Warm. He can cook you dinner and make you laugh while doing it. He may even seem like the most approachable of the three Cross brothers.

But threaten someone he loves?

That man disappears very quickly.

Kaelis is fiercely loyal, incredibly protective, and absolutely capable of reminding you that underneath the smile, the jokes, and the good manners…

he is still a vampire.

And if you touch her?

You die.

So give me Noah’s hardworking devotion, book Emmett Cullen’s massive build and dark-haired good looks, Joey Tribbiani’s humor and heart, and Jamie Fraser’s fierce I will do anything for the woman I love protectiveness…

And you’ve got Kaelis Cross.

And Then They Became Theirs

The funny thing about character inspiration is that eventually, you stop seeing the inspiration.

At some point, I stopped thinking about Maiara Walsh when I wrote Aria. Aleric stopped being pieces of Eric Northman and Carlisle Cullen. Damien wasn’t Matt Bomer, Luke Evans, Anthony Bridgerton, or The Crow. And Kaelis became so much more than the characters who first helped me imagine him.

They just became Aria, Aleric, Damien, and Kaelis.

They developed their own voices, mannerisms, histories, flaws, and ways of loving each other. Half the time, I’ll write something and immediately delete it because nope, he wouldn’t say that—as if these fictional people aren’t entirely made up inside my own head. 😂

These were simply the little pieces of inspiration that helped me find them.

And now comes the really fun part.

You get to meet them.

Soon, they’ll exist in your imagination too. Your Aleric might look completely different from mine. You might picture Damien’s smile differently or imagine Kaelis a little differently every time he walks onto the page.

And I kind of love that.

Because after spending more than a year with these characters living inside my head, I’m almost ready to hand them over to you.

So tell me…

Who do you think will be your favorite Cross brother?

Aleric — the Viking leader with a healer’s heart

Damien — the quiet, shadow-wielding mystery

Kaelis — the sunshine with fangs who would burn the world for the people he loves

Or maybe you’re like Aria and think choosing is entirely overrated. 😉

You’ll find out November 5th.

~J. L. Ski

BREATHE — Book One of The Immortal Series

Preorder now. 🖤