Character Studies for my permanently forthcoming fantasty novel (yes, that's "fantasty" - don't ask) Forever's Other End.
Jensa "Hen" Hencock: eldritch advisor to seven presidents and ex-captain of the decommissioned Timeship The Goose Gossage. They don't come any manlier, more determined, more capable or just plain more than this six-foot-naught all-around-expert. Capable of anything from tying all sorts of archaic rope knots, to beating six trained aikido experts at once in unarmed combat, to rewiring a garage, to deciphering arcane symbols, to lifting your wallet as slick as a sacred mystery, to seducing any willing woman no matter how beautiful, to fast-talking a security guard or maître d, to deconstructing French poetry from a Marxist-feminist perspective, Hencock is one cool customer under pressure or other circumstances. Bitter about a number of things - first and foremost his keen awareness that within this time-frame, most of his spectacular achievements in life lie in the future and that hence, no one gives him much credit for them; second, third and fourth-most, the decisions of the Future Transit Authority to suspend his mission, decommission his ship and strand him in exile in the Present for an extended suspension. Still, he's certain he's spotted an eventuality that they haven't seen, and he's hip to the task of taking it all in hand for his own benefit and the protection of oer-humanity. "Some call me 'Hen', some call me 'Jens', but nobody calls me 'Jenny'!'"
Jasilla: no surname - yet. Perhaps the only person on the planet who might be considered Hen's equal, Jasilla was born outside of time in an experimental dimension, and has since made a name for herself as an antiquarian by committing the entire contents of the internet circa January 12th 2010 14:04 Zulu Time to memory. She has entered our present time-frame on a research and education grant to study her own effects as she interferes with the timestream in a series of rigorously-designed experiments. A master of as many martial arts as have been invented, she is also an expert marksman with any ranged weapon ever devised, a demolitions specialist, and a military strategist on a par with all seven of the greatest generals in history combined. While Hen is a world-class occultist, Jasilla has delved even deeper than that and has some working knowledge of charmcasting, rudimentary spellweaving, and dwimmerlain. She is also a K-rank psionic with a range of intrusive and telesensory talents. "Hmmm, I'm in the Now, darling. Ask me again when I'm in the Then."
Jasilla and Hen circle each other warily, both well aware of the fact that a hot sex relationship awaits them at some point in the intersection of their mutual futures, but neither one wanting to rush into it as they know it that ends badly in domesticity, marriage, and kids.
2 comments:
Every damn character in this book is going to be what we in the fiction business refer to as a "Mary Sue."
Yup, even henchmen, security guards and maître d's.
Good writing gets even better when you set yourself arbitrary challenges.
I got the title wrong: it's The Wrong End of Forever.
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