#jo's characters

So two songs!  Both of these from Solas’ POV. They’ll be more later.

“I didn’t want to fuck you, but you’re pretty when you’re mine.”

Made by the awesome @reservoircat, an image board for my Hawke, Iona.  Iona can see auras, loves glitter, partying, booze, her friends and um, has a complicated relationship with two very different men to put it mildly. 

1. Tell us about your WIP!

The working title is Penny and the Golden City because I suck with titles and the file had to be called something and I already used that gag once upon a time naming a character... and, well, the important stuff:  

It’s set 200 years in the future, in an America where the United States is not a thing, I am pulling some inspiration from Fallout, the setting is Southern California, bombs were dropped by 45 on at LEAST LA, Sacramento and San Francisco.   Penny’s from a city in what used to be the Anza-Borrego National Park really close to the expanded Salton sea, which is now the Salton Bay and oops, there goes almost all of Mexicali.  The city is built into the ground and into the rocks there and hosts a doctor from one of the Domed cities that now house people who can afford to get into them and people who are desperate enough to be willing to take a deal to get in.

That’s important because Penny’s little brother has had TB pretty much all of his life and it’s reaching the point where he’s dying.  Given a tip by the Doctor (who in my head is totally played by Danny Trejo) Penny and her BFF Sam go to get put in touch with a group whose purpose is to help them steal a bunch of medicine from the local mega-Dome city and bring it back out to the Wastes. A heist that will save a ton of lives, if they can pull it off.

The Dome cities are Corporation run Authoritarian hellholes run by a group of three people named after the Greek fates.  No one knows outside of a select few, mostly board members, who these leaders are, only that there are three of them, and the position is one that is heavily competed for and comes with a very high mortality rate.  

Because there’s always a need for fresh labor, these cities contract people from the wastelands into work for all sorts of jobs from the menial to the highly technical, with the self taught and most talented able to compete and win a place inside with more rights than average Contracted Worker and Penny’s talented enough to try for that, giving them a way in to the city and on to the next part.  

So about the characters a bit, Penny’s full name is Penelope Pines, she’s half Indigenous Mexican and half African-American.  Her best friend, Samantha Zhong is half Chicanx/Chinese.  She’s transgender and thankfully has had access to hormones and a supportive family and friends and town because damnit in the future some things are going to be better. Once in they meet Emily Bartlett, the disaffected daughter of one of the ruling families and the one showing Penny the ropes in her new job.

Penny is a highly, highly talented programmer and robotics engineer, which bleeds into mechanics too.  Her father helped teach her, but she’s largely self taught and her crowning achievement is the recovery bot she rebuilt and reprogrammed with her father, which they named Cucaracha.  On account of him looking like a cockroach.  He acts like a corgi though. 

And um, I have a lot written already for character profiles and I’m still working on it and I worry it sucks and all that fun stuff, but yeah, still working on it.   Have it open and jot down ideas as they come to me, add notes, tweak the outline,  Next I have to start actually writing it.

5. Top five formative books?

Oh jeeze, this is hard. Um, Lord of Light, though reading it now makes me want to puke as Sam is a terrible person and the entire book a skeeve fest, but Zelazny had a talent for description t hat made me really hunger for his stuff, and hence A Night in Lonesome October is also on this list.  And at least there’s a lot less to hate about a dog.  His master being Jack the Ripper who is on a mystic crusade with all the other characters from horror and detective pop and folklore in one place? Sign me the fuck up.  There’s still tons of problematic shit in it but it happens through the lenses of the dog and really made me think of how you’d go about writing an animal that is relatable but still an animal. Then there’s War for the Oaks, which is even set in Minneapolis. :D I’ve read that like ten times.  Almost anything by @neil-gaiman.  The Great Gatsby, which is a study in characters that aren’t likable but a story that is still engaging and it’s description of 1920s Jazz Age America.  I swear, Zelda wrote more of that one that Scott. I will die on that hill.  When it comes to Star Wars and Sci-Fi writing, Timothy Zhan is my go to guy, he is also hella good.  And responsible for Thrawn. Mmmmm. Thrawn.  *cough*

51. Are you a secretive writer or do you talk with your friends about your books?

LOL I spam the shit out of my friends. I think my anxiety is part of it. I want to know what I’m writing is at least decent.  So yeah. :/ They get bothered. A lot. I will send entire blocks of text again because I found a typo.