Spotlight Friday: Kattalin Wolfe

It's Friday (again). I should, like every other normal person out there, be looking forward to Fridays. Mostly it means that I have the weekend ahead of me to catch up on sleep. And sleep? Is awesome. But stuuuuuuuuff. Anyway. You lot aren't here to hear me whine (though, if you wanted to, you could always find my non-Jaelin Nemain twitter/LJ/etc).

Today's unrelenting spotlight falls on a lady who I'm more or less still figuring out and who, probably, I wouldn't like if I met her. :)

Name: Kattalin Wolfe
Codename: Karma
Power: probability/luck manipulation
Team Affiliation: The Alliance

I spend a lot of time in Medic's head (you'll meet him.... July 15th) so I refer to a lot of characters by their codename. Karma, though, is mostly okay with this. She is the current leader of the Alliance, having took over when Derian left and Lena said a big "HELL NO" to leading. Karma appears to be very much in control, but she's really not. Before Derian left, there was this big thing that happened that prompted people to lay all their cards on the table. Then that team broke up. 6 out of the 13 members of the previous team left, leaving Karma with a team that either hated each other or couldn't trust each other. She's held on admirably, but she's fraying fast. Her second-in-command is Scry, though they both resent it. Mostly because Karma doesn't listen to Scry in the least bit. She doesn't think he has the clarity that his aunt does.

Karma was born in 2000 (no month or day yet, big surprise) and is roughly 5 foot 6 with black hair that's usually back in a ponytail or braids and green eyes. She's currently dating teammate Daniel Roca, codename Fletch. He's an archer. I have such a thing for archers (and redheads). Anyway. She runs the Alliance mostly like a friendly dictatorship - she will listen to you and your opinions, but it's ultimately her call, and she will always go with her gut instinct. This is also part of the reason she and Scry clash a lot. Scry Sees things, but Karma doesn't want to acknowledge the visions or his feelings. She really doesn't like precogs, or cognitives of any type (there's a couple of them). There was no other choice for leadership (aside from maybe Daniel) so the Alliance is stuck with her. She has toyed with the idea of leaving many times, but she's kept the team together (more or less) for the past six years. She's also made deals, many of them ones that no one knows about, with the Cabal and other various organizations in the belief that eventually it will make the world stronger.

She is very flawed. And has a lot of bad things coming her way because of those flaws. I sometimes feel bad for her, but then she starts being a ... less than nice person to some of my other characters and I remember why her grave is so deep - she dug that hole herself.

Spotlight Friday: Anders Chryse

Anders Chryse is the Alliance’s Scry, their precognitive. Scry is pretty damned important to the story, overall, on so many levels but I can’t say why!! Not without massive spoilers. So I’m going to be dancing around the subject a lot. Also, I think I like this set-up pattern template-y type thing for the characters. It makes it easier, I think. Anyway, here we go:


Name: Anders Chryse
Codename: Scry
Power: Precognition
Team Affiliation: The Alliance

Scry prefers to go by his codename. He doesn’t get called Anders by anyone except his best friend, Troy Parker/Breaker. Scry’s powers started popping up when he was 15, and he went a little crazy for a couple of months before he got himself back in hand.

(A quick aside: Precognition is one of two powers that brings about high levels of insanity and usually sends people to the side of evil. The other is telepathy. It’s hard to hold onto the idea that people are good and that normally they will make the right choices when you can See the future going to hell in a hand basket, or when you can hear the flitting, fleeting black thoughts that everyone has lurking in their heads. I’ll go more in depth with telepathy later. Like, when I cover one of the two telepaths in my world. The others are broken.)

Scry also has a bit of a legacy. He comes from a long line of precognitives, most of them chosen by Apollo to be his Oracle at Delphi. Scry’s Aunt is Pythia, and he is very close with her. As such, he also REALLY dislikes Apollo. The feeling is more than mutual. Apollo would have happily killed Scry years ago, but because he is Pythia’s favorite nephew, he won’t touch Scry. Scry’s family is rather large; all of them are encouraged to have as many children as possible so that they can continue to be Apollo’s favored. The Chryse line has been the Oracle at Delphi for over two centuries. Scry, however, when he lost it, left the floating city of Delphi (which is as close to where Greece was originally before it got wiped out from the Restructuring) and joined the Squad. It was there that he recruited Troy Parker (Breaker) when the other teen rescued him from getting a massive ass kicking, and also introduced Troy to his future wife, Serah Marks (Mimic).

Scry and Troy were a natural team, one able to See and the other able to Hear, and were able to ferret out a lot of information, bust plans, the works. Troy also kept Scry smiling and relatively normal. Of course, when bad things happened in 2030 to the Alliance that centered on Dean, that all changed. Troy’s mind broke under his telepathy and Scry lost his best friend and gained a whole lot of bad. Scry’s visions center on the threat that Dean poses, wanting the Alliance to kill him and get rid of the threat, no matter what the cost. His other visions, ones that see the darker things that the Alliance would rather pretend don’t exist, cause the Alliance to ignore his warnings. He is uptight and unchanging, Seeing everything that will come to pass and unable to do anything about it because no one will listen to him (even though Apollo hasn't cursed him or anything, this is just the Alliance being ridiculously stupid).

Things will change, though, and the change will be for the benefit of all. (More or less.)

Music Playlist: Dean Prescott || The Black King

I'm slightly obsessive about music. Anyone who knows me will assuredly back this up. Silence creeps me out so I always have something on to provide noise. As such I have a whole bunch of songs that remind me of my characters and that I sometimes use when writing them. I figured I would share my current playlist for my main character, Dean, with you lovely people.

(Yes, I am more or less dancing around him and not giving that many details out because...well. It's Dean. There are reasons upon reasons to leave him shroud in shadows and mystery.)

Playlist
1. La Roux - In For The Kill (Skream Remix)
2. Jakalope - Go Away
3. Fuel - Won't Back Down (Bring You Hell remix)
4. Jimmy Eat World - Here It Goes
5. Jimmy Eat World - Let It Happen
6. BT - Force of Gravity
7. BT - Dark Heart Dawning
8. 12 Rounds - Something's Burning
9. Lifehouse - Disarray
10. Lifehouse - The Joke
11. Lifehouse - Simon
12. Poe - Angry Johnny
13. Matchbox Twenty - Unwell
14. She Wants Revenge - Tear You Apart
15. Tara Slone - My Little Secret
16. Tracy Chapman - Remember the Tinman
17. Joydrop - Sometimes Wanna Die
18. Emilie Autumn - Epilogue: What If
19. Johnny Hollow - Boogey Man


The music is varied and ranges all over the place. Some of it is from Book 1, some it from later books. And not all of them are...exactly Dean. There's something else called the Black Voice, which causes some of these songs/feelings.

Dirty Limericks and Nursery Rhymes

Years and years ago (when even the author of the book deemed it maybe a little too old for me) I got the book Greasy Grimy Gopher Guts by Josepha Sherman. Now, honestly, it is an amazingly awesome book. I remember trolling the hallways of my high school after classes while hanging out with friends and singing out some of the ones that bash education and school in general. They were fun to giggle over and it was always nice to have a comeback in rhyme handy if someone got up in my face. Don't let anyone ever tell you otherwise - it is fantastic to confound your opponent with rhyme. They give you the BEST looks.

Why is any of this important? Well, I'll tell you.

I got it into my head to incorporate nursery rhymes and limericks into my novel as something positive for Dean to latch onto. Dean? Dean who? Well, you'll learn of him eventually. Dean is the Black King and one of my two main characters (the other is Graham/Medic). Maybe I'll post something pretty about him and Medic later on. Either tomorrow or next week. A good way for everyone to meet them...that's not, you know, spoilerific on the main books. ;)

What I was wondering (and the real whole point of this post besides letting Jae just ramble her head off) is what you're favorite rhymes were as a kid. Or limericks. Or just in general. I find myself humming Miss Mary Mack or reciting Sally had a Steamboat when cleaning every now and then, and then there's the times when it's absolutely gorgeous and sunny out and I start humming the words to "the worms crawl in, the worms crawl out." What can I say, I'm slightly perverse.

Spotlight Friday: Meet Derian Walker

Derian Walker’s codename is Hyperion. He was born in 1984 (I have yet to give him a day and a month and an astrological sign, but I will!). He’s 6’7, with blond hair and white eyes. Because of his powers, he has skin that glows a soft white light all the time. He has two main abilities: light absorption and energy sourcing. He does best with natural light, but can deal with the glow given off by electricity and artificial light sources.

Derian is the leader of the Alliance in 2029, which makes him 45 when Dean is first brought to the Alliance’s attention. His second-in-command is Lena Soto, who he isn’t really close with, but he can rely on her to get the job done. He does date Blake, but he’s not completely sure why. He’s always dated women before, but something about Blake caught his attention. The two of them fight constantly, mixing as easily as water and oil. Derian is a man of few words, believing that action is always stronger than anything that could be spoken.

Blake left the team after an incident involving Dean and a couple other members of the Alliance in 2030 . After he did, Derian took a long look at what was left of the Alliance and the people he knew and resigned. He instead joined a team that spends most of its time taking care of dimension hoppers – refugees from other dimensions and timelines that try and sneak into other worlds for whatever reasons they have.

At the moment he is quite happily letting someone else boss him around. He does know, however, that it's only a matter of time before what happened in 2030 comes back to haunt the Alliance. 

Spotlight Fridays

Just a little bit of housekeeping, but I thought I'd do something I've seen a couple other places do (other blogs, I mean). I think every Friday (or every other Friday or something-every Friday) I'm going to do a spotlight on something. It might be a place, or a god, or a character, but I'll be doing a little bit of a spotlight on them so that everyone can meet them!

When it comes to the characters, I've got a massively huge Excel spreadsheet of characters. So the character spotlights will deal with ones in the main novel series I'm working on as well as characters on the "bad" side of the fence and ones that will show up in future books or ones that only show up in the short stories. Basically, my world is a massive thing and I tend to over-plan certain aspects of the book. So why not share, right? :)

If you have questions, or want to see a specific character/place/event/tradition spotlighted, go over to the tumblr (http://jaelinnemain.tumblr.com/ask) to ask me a question about stuff.

Introducing the world and the teams

This is horribly oversimplified, but here we go:

The year is 2035. The world has recovered from the after-effects of a world-wide catastrophe that happened in the 1960s that caused massive natural disasters that has rearranged the face of the globe. This catastrophe is known as the Restructuring. To make up for the lack of land, people now live in cities in the air and sea; there are also seven space satellites, each controlled and run by a different nation. During the Restructuring was the return of the ancient gods, largely known by their Greek names. There are two races, Homo sapien and Homo superum, where the superum make up almost 95% of the population of the world. People are born with powers and abilities and it is accepted as normal. Some sapiens, however, fight against what they see as a methodical genocide by the superum and are labeled as terrorists who seek to destroy the peace and utopia nature of the world.

While there are multiple teams of super crime fighters with costumes and masks (yes, superheroes) throughout the world and different countries have their own, there are two global teams: the Alliance and the Squad. The Alliance is the police force that combats threats that are too big for the individual country squads, meaning they deal with global, transdimensional, and intergalactic threats. The team resides in a tower in the sky. The Alliance is complied of the best of the best, devoting years of their lives to the protection and safety of all.

The Squad is like a miniature version of the Alliance, made up of teens and young adults who want to make a difference in the world. Those invited onto the Squad are given a first-rate education and are given the chance to join protection squads for other nations or even join the Alliance. The Squad's Compound is located on the floating ocean city of Argyre where they take up half the city.

While the world seems perfect and like a futuristic utopia, it is only that on the surface. There are criminals and murderers in this world, imbued with powers, who do their best to knock the status quo of perfection and stability. They form the criminal organization known as the Cabal. There is a different threat, a darker one, that almost no one is aware of. Underneath lurks a darkness that the lead members of the Alliance go out of their way to shield everyone, even others on the Alliance, from. They are a shadow organization, sapiens, that are extremely well-connected and seemingly benign, spread throughout the entire world and perfectly poised to destroy the world as it has been known since the Restructuring first happened.

Okay, so.

I actually need to remember to use this thing. I'm actually really, really horrible at this self-promotion type stuff. But, I'm gonna try and do this better! I think I'll do little snippits that don't have to do with the main novel. The snips I'll introduce with a little background for each one, like a general idea of the characters. I'll probably make a little post in a few about the differences of the teams and my world, so that everyone can know and it's easily accessible. I'm also going to see if there's a way to do cuts, like they do on LiveJournal/Dreamwidth so I don't clutter up the screen with unclean formatting. :)