Jenn Neal

Fletcher is much like Kiana in the fact that he has been around for a long time (He is sixteen in VM, which is arguably just as long as he has been flitting around in my head like a bottle of chaos). Initially, Fletcher was just Kiana’s spunky best friend and basically sidekick. He had no magic, no real back story. But then one day he just changed. He became his own person and filled out, though sometimes his backstory is so tragic I worry he will end up whiny (though I have been assured this is not the case). He is the result of me wanting a magical main characters who truly pays the price for their magic. A punk rock kid with a heart of gold. A mage whose magic rebounds so that every time he does something good, he does something equally evil. What must that do to someone?

Ever since he first heard his dad’s first Exploited album, Fletcher Argan has been a punk rock kid at his core. He tried and failed to master the guitar, but it didn’t stop him from dyeing his hair neon blue and wearing his dad’s old concert t-shirts until they disintegrated. When he started feeding a colony of dock cats, he named them all after his music idols (Sid, Biafra, Iggy, Topper, and of course Wattie). Music is everything, even if he doesn’t know how to make it. Or at least it was.

That was before. Before everything fell apart. And now all he has left are shredded memories of a better life.

Most people are born with magic and it fills out as their bodies grow. But for Fletcher it surged like cyanide through his veins one Sunday afternoon, choking out whatever normality his future had in store, and filling him with a power that demanded to be used. A power that took as much as it gave. When it took someone he loved, he swore he’d never used it again. But he is no match for an ancient power vying to be used, to protect, to fight.

And now there’s a boy in his room. A boy Fletcher’s magic yanked from the ether of another world while in the middle of a full-blown panic attack. And the boy is telling him of worlds where people might accept him for who he is, where he can hide from the damage he has caused. All he has to do is agree to help the boy hunt a dangerous monster, to face down a vicious gang and it’s violent leader. All he has to do is find his way through a sentient carnivorous forest while being hunted by an aristocratic, bigoted cult. All he has to do is master the magic he swore he’d never use. That’s…worth it, right?