Minds Within Mine
I’ve always wondered what my characters say about me. Couple that with there are so many folks living in my head, it’s difficult to keep track... Why don’t I write about them here?
Once I’ve breathed a little life into them, I’ll figure out where to place them.
Of course, an obligatory spoiler warning for my past and future fiction. And discussions of unhinged worldbuilding and thought-through violence (because these are the stories I write.)
First, there’s Mara. She’s been in my life since 2019 when I devised her earliest version. In her trilogy (The Mara Files, of course) she’s a forty-five-year-old wrongly convicted criminal, disgraced war hero, disabled veteran, and former peacekeeping unit captain.
A woman of strong morals and even stronger opinions, she’s intimidating in both stature and presence, with little time for the petty concerns of others. Including the basic social niceties. She’s jarring personality, blunt and stubborn (her name means bitter), yet she’s guided by justice.
And this is where her redemption lies. Even if she doesn’t know it yet.
Sharing Mara’s story is Ishali, a young reptilian of indeterminate age and origins, yet he seems far more versed in the criminal underworld than Mara. Patient to her need for instant results and gentle to her brashness, it appears he was born in the wrong world. Weighed down by something never explained, he carries himself in even ridiculous situations with indescribable grace.
Ardent and Cal are Mara’s two former lieutenants and forever at odds with each other. Despite working with them for over ten years, only when they’re forced together in extraordinary circumstances does Mara learn to work with them. They’re both troublemakers, though Ardent is a powerful artificial entity and Cal is an overgrown ball of grump with horns.
Will they cooperate without her guidance?
It appears the answer will always be no.
A standalone book, languishing since 2023, contains a trio so intertwined they might as well run in each other’s blood. As Isadora puts it: “She’s the thread binding our stories together, you’re the catalyst, and I’m the chronicler. The sensemaker.”
Isadora is a compulsive journaler. Over twenty-four hours without putting pen to paper, and her mind unravels. Like me. Except where she heed the warning, I allow myself to become distracted by shiny new objects galore. An anxious, sensitive soul, she’s an excellent diplomat, yet unappreciated and overlooked.
She draws her meaning in life from her two beloved friends.
One is Gwen, a young woman who’s more metal than flesh, rebuilt after an accident that left her scarred and on life’s last legs. Devoted to her principles and her people, she’d rather watch the galaxy burn than compromise either. A woman of few words and expressions.
And ‘you’? That’s Xander, engineered as part of a coalition on creating a species of super beings, combining the best qualities of human and alaraph, an avian people. People heralded this experiment as a savior in the ongoing war, and yet... Of thousands of tests, only he survived.
A mess of anatomies cobbled together, a body neither humanoid nor avian, too heavy for the sky and too light for the ground. It should’ve been a disaster.
Instead, he and Gwen, in their sheer raw power and dogged determination, turned the tide of the war. Only one came back from the brink. Or so they thought.
When he resurfaces, he’s unrecognizable. Scars cover his once pristine skin like golden threads snatched from the skin, body devoid of jewelry and markings, wings rebuilt and made retractable.
They all think they know what happened. Now they have to see what’s next.
The rest remain mere sketches, outlines, and concepts.
Ariki, a man with an eyepatch and secrets even I’m not privy to. Kieran, a boy more powerful than the empress but is her subordinate than take over her empire. Marcus Irris, living under an assumed name for so long, he forgets who he is.
And more to come. Ideas are ever-present. Just waiting to be discovered.
Do people reside within you? Who are they? What are they like?
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Statistics → Word Count: 708 | Reading Time: 332
