The first iteration of Luke's character in Love and Go was something of a sarcastic, couldn't-care-less character mucking about in a garden of hurt. Fun guy really. If you're interested in reading an unedited version of Love and Go with hardass Luke, ask me. It's probably a better rendition but there was issues with motivation and the like. And I thought I was getting too comfortable writing the same sort of characters, and then I read The Defense by Nabokov which portrayed a disturbed chess player.

And so I came up with a fucked-up Luke. I hope not fucked in a way that's off-putting, but fucked up in an interesting way. He's mess of things. He's gentle, naive. He aims to please. But at the same time, he's apathetic and can be very unyielding. It's a challenge keeping his actions monotone and maintaining a constant tension about him.

Can't say I've succeeded because readers so far complain about his lack of emotion. Unfortunately becoming more emotional isn't part of his character arc. In some sense he's the impact character. He doesn't change, which drives Hao completely crazy towards the end, triggering devastating events. But Luke does have an arc, that of finding personal salvation. It's Hao's challenge to get over himself, ignore Luke's strange manners, and help Luke save himself before it's too late. Whether Hao succeeds or not is still an open question.