by J. Luke Bennecke
Apparently, I didn’t get the author memo about crafting your protagonist in the image of someone other than yourself. Well, I did get the memo, just several years after I’d written two novels with Dr. Jake Bendel leading the charge. In that sense, he’s every bit of who I wanted to be if I had a magic wand and could’ve written my own life’s story: a California professional civil engineer, business owner, happily married with an adult daughter named Carlie. Someone who, deep down, wants to leave a lasting legacy on Earth while doing his best to solve big societal problems using his engineering mind.
J. Luke Bennecke
By many accounts, definitely not me. Similar, but not. And in many ways, completely the opposite. Below, I invite you to allow me the privilege of sharing some behind-the-scenes information, to help you get to know my favorite character a little better.
1. What do you admire most about Jake? He hasn’t let his celebrity status go to his head. Every time someone approaches and asks for an autograph, he’s stunned. Which, at first, is cool. Admiration from strangers would feel good to most people. For a while. But it has the potential to turn creepy. Especially when people know more about his private life than Jake expects them to. In one scene, an elderly admirer mentions how cute she thinks Jake’s grandson is. Fine, but she also knows the little guy’s name (Andrew). For better or worse, now Andrew will grow up with a certain level of celebrity status, whether he wants to or not. Many real-world celebrity relatives hold significant disdain for this unintended consequence of fame. To be sure, when this happens, it does bother Jake, but he goes with the flow, coming off as a likable fellow, and burying his feelings of insecurity. Which is all part of my personal admiration for him.
2. What do you see as his flaws? I’ve given Jake several flaws. We’ll discuss two here. First, his tendency to get motion sickness has unfortunately warped into a phobia of putting himself in situations where he is likely to get yanked around and manhandled. This, mixed with mild claustrophobia, makes for scenes laced with tension when I drop him into a kidnapping scene, for example, where the terrorists cover his head with a black hood and take him on a bumpy airplane ride. Or when he’s arrested and handcuffed by the FBI before they herd him into a crowded elevator that takes forever to ascend to a top floor. Secondly, both of Jake’s parents died when he was in his twenties, so I think he missed out on having a strong middle-aged father figure to model for him what a devoted husband/wife relationship entails. We discover early in Book One he had been briefly unfaithful to his wife, Cynthia, but they were working things out and in the process of recommitting to one another when she is lost in a tragic fire. To me, this flaw is as humanly raw as it gets, but at the same time, it allowed me to build on him character-wise to show the strength of his love for his wife.
I hope you enjoyed reading this little peek behind the curtain of my favorite protagonist, Dr. Jake Bendel.
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