Jenn Neal

Hello lovely people! Thank you for being here on this quiet Saturday morning. I am currently drinking coffee with Mojo snoring on my foot. And it is perfect.

I decided that since I did these little character blurbs for Tayz and Najila, I should probably do them for the main characters as well. First, can we just admire the art? The way the artist brought both Kiana and the forest to life? Her scars? Her staff t-shirt? And those eyes? Gah! I just can’t get enough of her. Yes, I do have all of these on my wall. And yes, I do stare at them ALL THE TIME. Because I simply cannot get over their perfection.

This one hit me pretty hard. Kiana has been on this journey from the beginning. When I had the idea for Divasi (the magical beings in my VM who can move between worlds without need of doorways), Kiana came with it. There have been so many versions of her throughout the years, as I tried to figure out how to make this story work. In her first version, she spent the first three chapters eating green pancakes with her best friend. Then she found a portal in an antique store. She woke up with her bed on fire. She didn’t know what she was, and suffered from amnesia. She was abandoned by her family and tossed into Aberdeen, Washington like an old shoe.

But none of these really fit. Because Kiana is fierce, vicious, and smart. She spits insults when she’s scared, and she’ll throw herself in front of a monster for almost anyone, but you’ll have to chisel away the armor she’s put around herself before you ever see her smile. She hates that when the world looks at her they see an abomination, and she wants nothing more than to be seen for the person she is.

Now we meet her in Ketchikan, Alaska. She’s working the slime line (cutting fish) at a fishing lodge, which is a job I did for three years. Hey, even Divasi need cash to survive. And she is exactly as she always should have been: a fugitive on the run.

It took me ten years to find the right story to tell in conjunction with her character and her arc. Even funnier, it didn’t even end up being just her story I was telling. Maybe that was where I went wrong at the beginning. She is the kind of character who changes the world, but she’ll have to be dragged there kicking and screaming. Or in this case, she just needed the proper motivation: a monster to kill, and a government to topple.

Have a lovely weekend everyone!