Everyone I Ever Was and Everyone I Ever Will Be

Not too long ago zombres did a Top 5 post, and one of the subjects was Favorite Fiction Tropes. I absolutely could not resist that one, so here are mine:



1) Father/Daughter, No Relation

Favorite Example: Artie and Claudia on Warehouse 13. Their interactions have me in a constant state of Dorky-Clapping-and-Grinning when I watch that show.

Example of Mine: Jaren and Thiare from Karavan's Dawn.


2) Epic Quest

Favorite Example: The Stand. Always and forever The Stand. I remember lugging that enormous book around middle school and not even caring because I *had* to find out what would happen next.

Examples of Mine: Stealing Time; Jia's Charms; Karavan's Dawn; And This is Fate; Atmidos, to an extent. I think Pale Moon is the only project of mine where Epic Quest isn't used. That might change between now and publication. ;-)


3) Enemies Becoming Friends ((or at least starting to grudgingly respect each other))

Favorite Example: Jake Lonergan and Col. Dolarhyde in Cowboys and Aliens. My love for that movie is all-encompassing. I need fanfic and icons. And a chance to morph myself into the movie and pounce on Daniel Craig.

Examples of Mine: Simon and Finn in And This is Fate.


4) "Have you ever been with a warrior woman?"

Favorite Example: Beckett & Castle. Castle definitely has his badass moments, but when it comes right down to it, Beckett's going to be the one drawing a gun while Castle asks if anyone in the room's heard of a little something called diplomacy. I think she's physically braver than he is, but he's emotionally braver. Which is partly why they balance each other out so well. Why isn't Season 3 out yet I need my fix

Examples of Mine: Jaetina & Kynn from the Karavan series; Stace & Finn from And This is Fate; Maia & Xavierre from Stealing Time.


5) Threesomes (no, not that kind**)

Favorite Example: Zoe, Wash, and Mal from Firefly

Examples of Mine: Kynn, Ki'Rana, and Trader from the Karavan series; Finn, Stace, and Simon from And This is Fate; Persephone, Iris, and Hades from Atmidos.

**except when they are-- Maia, Nayara, and Xavierre from Stealing Time

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And here we have the first (of many) instances of me cybercasting somebody in more than one role because I love them just that much.




Daniel Craig
Hephaestus, from the Greek Pantheon series

Hephaestus was largely left alone on Olympus until the first war between the Gods. Zeus quickly put an end to the small rebellion, and hung Hera from her wrists in the sky as a warning to the others who'd gone against him. For over a day she remained there, screaming for help, but none of the others dared to go against a furious Zeus to try and get her down.

Finally, Hephaestus acted.

Zeus flung him from Olympus for his betrayal, and the landing permanently disabled his legs. Since then, the quiet God has become a recluse, trying his best to stay away from the others and their fights. But he's not going to be able to avoid the politics of his home forever.

Also cast as:

The Lieutenant, in the sequel to Jia's Charms:
Lieut is stuck doing the quintessential One Last Job for an employer he despises. Going to Empyrean to salvage what he can from the wreck of one of his employer's wave ships is supposed to be a straightforward task. Then he meets the leader of the planet's colonists, who's determined to not let him get a thing from that ship that her people can use, and things start getting more complicated. Add in a spy amongst his crew with a secret mission, and things go from complicated to deadly.

Mihkael, in Karavan:
He knows only one thing for certain-- he and his companion Serra have to run. Any other details, like who they are and who they're running from, are gone. He and Serra join Karavan because among the crew are the few people they've allowed themselves to trust, and staying on board means being constantly on the move while they try to figure out what their pasts hold.

Vasya, in Memories of Her Singing:
He's one of the higher-ups in an organization dedicated to overthrowing the current regime. Which is news to the Queen, since he's supposedly been friends with her for most of her life. . .

28. Have you ever written a character with physical or mental disabilities? Describe them, and if there's nothing major to speak of, tell us a few smaller ones.

Haven't done it; it's not something I have personal experience with and I'm not quite confident enough in the research I've done to tackle it yet. I expect my comfort level with it will change soon, and then so will my answer to this question.

I'm not sure if the term for them is really 'disabilities', but Ki'Rana from Karavan is working through a pretty bad case of PTSD, and Lauren from Jia's Charms has depression.

26. Let's talk art! Do you draw your characters? Do others draw them? Pick one of your OCs and post your favorite picture of him!

I have tried to draw my characters. Results-- sooooo not pretty. So now I pay other actually talented people to draw them!

Since I refuse to pick just one character portrait, these go below the cut:

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19. Favorite minor that decided to shove himself into the spotlight and why!

Well, there are two, and they're both in the Karavan series.

Va'Heta was originally going to be a fairly small character, quite possibly a villain, and get killed off early on. Didn't work out that way; once I started writing him it became obvious he wasn't a villain and I was too curious about where else he'd go to kill him in the first book.

Ki'Rana is a childhood friend of his, who first showed up in just a one-line reference he made about how someone else on board reminded him of her. I had it in my mind that at the time he was making the comment, she was already dead. Then I sat down and wrote her death scene and . . . well, she refused to die. Good thing, too, because she's one of my favorite characters now. :-)

17. Favorite protagonist and why!

They're trying to brain-zap my poor indecisive self, aren't they?

At the moment, we have a tie-- very different characters, from different series, but equally awesome to me:

1) Rachel, from Jia's Charms and its sequel. She's the leader of a colony on a severed world, who unexpectedly has to deal with an influx of people who were not expecting to have to live in an area with no indoor plumbing and creepy predators hanging around. She's fair, independent, and dotes on her younger sister (though in true sibling fashion, she shows that mainly through teasing and sarcasm).

2) Thiare, from the Karavan series. She doesn't really fit in with the others-- most of them are hardened warriors or at least familiar with fighting and used to traveling. She's just out of school and while her knowledge makes her a valuable asset, her lack of real world experience and general naivete can make her a liability. Especially when some of the stray animals she insists on taking in would probably eat half the crew if given a chance.

12. In what story did you feel you did the best job of worldbuilding? Any side-notes on it you'd like to share?

Well, with Karavan most of it takes place on a ship, so in a weird way it doesn't seem as much like worldbuilding to me, because we have so many cultures interacting there with some focus on each instead of strong focus on one. With the We Were Strangers series I regret not going into as much detail with a lot of things (I have so much nostalgic love for that series, but it was started when I was seventeen and there are things I'd do differently now).

To me it's tied between Stealing Time and Jia's Charms-- the former because of the jumping between the past and the future and showing how everything ties in together, and the differences between the Bihlan and the Niveti that cause the conflicts in the book; the latter because of the world, the animal and plant life and how people there have adapted.

So worldbuilding in a cultural/religious sense, Stealing Time. In terms of the world itself, Jia's Charms.

10. What are some really weird situations your characters have been in? Everything from serious canon scenes to meme questions counts!

Well, I've got an upcoming scene where a guy has to deal with aliens crash-landing in his backyard. Stace got chased around by a mutant wasp-thing and got trapped in a flour bin (the perils of only being 4 inches tall). Rohan tries to go back in time one hour and ends up skipping decades. Thiare adopts large hostile predators like most people would take in kittens. Sera goes on a walk on a hiking trail and ends up traveling to another dimension.

I'm sure there are more, but a lot of these things don't really stand out to me because even though they're objectively weird, they make perfect sense in the context of the story.

7. Do you listen to music while you write? What kind? Are there any songs you like to relate/apply to your characters?

We could be here a while. ;-)

I most always listen to music when I write, usually the radio (yay Pandora). There are tons of songs I associate with my characters, either because I was listening to the soundtrack nonstop while working on it-- which is why the Wicked soundtrack will always remind me of Stealing Time-- or because the lyrics fit certain characters, even if I haven't written those characters yet. ((haven't started my Greek Pantheon books yet, for instance, but April March's song "Chick Habit"? Zeus. And Sweetwater's "In a Rainbow" is Iris.)) Lyrics are usually the way I pick songs for characters/books; Kath can confirm that I'm forever sending her lyrics with "How perfect is this for so-and-so" notes. For instance, Emmy Rossum's "Slow Me Down" could've been written for Thiare.

But sometimes the lyrics won't really matter; the tune of the song just seems to fit the character. Can't really explain that one, but it happens a lot: Sixpence None the Richer's "There She Goes" is always going to be Stace's theme to me; Polyphonic Spree's "Light and Day" is Jia; Foo Fighters' "Learn to Fly" is Logan.

Some characters have a ton of songs I associate with them, others have none. I can't really come up with a song to associate with Simon. Few songs seem to have a "Right now I can tolerate you so I might let you live. Maybe." theme. Maybe Voltaire's "When You're Evil".

One of these days I really need to make novel soundtracks/playlists.

Found via apocalypsos:


1. Tell us about your favorite writing project/universe that you've worked with and why.

And already, the questions are hard. LOL

I'm going to cheat a little bit and do one from my personal projects and one from stuff I've worked on with Kath.

Personal Project: At the moment, Pale Moon-- it's been interesting to do research for it (yay various supernatural beings!) and the characters have taken over my brain, so. Once I start working again on another project, my favorite will switch to that one, I'm sure.

With Kath: *points to icon* Probably Karavan. We've done series work before, but Karavan is the first real time I've worked on the kind of thing that I love to read: sprawling epic with a huge cast of characters. Though Stealing Time was great, too-- time travel! royalty! alternate realities!-- and Jia's Charms started out as just a simple romance and then turned into an awesome worldbuilding thing . . .

All in all, this meme was designed for someone more decisive than me. ;-)


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