Senta and the Steel Dragon: Characters

As I’ve been working on a Senta and the Steel Dragon Encyclopedia, I’ve been reexamining my characters in that book series.  There are a lot of them– literally hundred.  The important characters, by design, fit nicely into triangles– sets of three characters that work push and pull against each other.  Some triangles strengthen each corner and some (love triangles, in particular) threaten to tear apart.  Here are some of the ways the characters fit together.

Senta, Zurfina, Bessemer: Zurfina is guardian to both Senta and Bessemer, though she seems devoted more to one than the other.  Senta and Bessemer have an extremely strong bond, as they must since they are the title characters of the series.

Iolanthe, Terrence, Augustus: The three Dechantagne siblings, who each have very different feelings toward their brothers and sister.

Iolanthe, Terrence, Yuah: Iolanthe and Yuah (her dressing maid) have a very strained relationship, and Terrence is often the straining point.  He is the only man Iolanthe respects, and the one Yuah desperately loves.  He has a sort of ambivalent love for them both.

Yuah, Zeah, Egeria: Zeah and his daughter Yuah are very close, and the addition of Egeria as Zeah’s love interest puts the two very different women in a sort of admire/fear relationship.

Iolanthe, Calliere, Staff: Iolanthe and her two love interests.

Hero, Honor, Hertzel: Three siblings escaping a police state to arrive in a new and very different world.

Senta, Graham, Saba: All three of these characters grow up together and each is friends with the other two, though in different intensities.

Zurfina, Kesi, Labrith: The two wizards who both want Zurfina’s power, and whom she dismisses as not worth her interest.

Terrence, Yuah, Pantagria: Terrence and the two women he loves– one real and one not so much.

Some of these relationships fall within the confines of one book, while others continue throughout the series.  And there are about 300 more characters, so I could point out about 900 more triangles.

Update: Love and the Darkness

Love and the DarknessI’m a little over halfway through the draft of Love and the Darkness.  That means that there are less than ten thousand words left, since it is plotted out at 20,000.  I’m finding it harder and harder to write right now, and it’s not because of this particular story.  It’s because school is getting closer and closer– two more days off as I write this.  Hopefully by the time you read this though,  I will have finished those 10K words and have it on the release schedule.

When the book is ready, there will be a release date several weeks after the announcement.  I’ll be using Smashwords’ new preorder system.  That will let me get it all arranged and yet give me time enough make sure that it is properly finished.  I was really upset with myself about His Robot Wife: Patience is a Virtue.  I was in such a hurry to get it out that I sent it with errors.  I’m not going to let that happen again.  Professionalism– that’s my new watchword this year for school and its going to be the same with my writing.  Readers deserve nothing less.

Unlike my other stories, Love and the Darkness has essentially one main character.  This is at the same time easier and more difficult to write.  You can stay in the mind of one character, which is nice.  But characters can get inside your head too and when that happens, it’s nice to be able to switch to a different one.  My character in Love and the Darkness is Charles Bentley Howard.  He’s sort of a wealthy, nerdy character, and so his first name is a tip of the hat to Charles Dexter Ward, the H.P. Lovecraft character, though this is not really a Lovecraftian horror story.

All the characters in Love and the Darkness either interact with Charles Bentley Howard, or they are related to him– or both.  There are several female characters, and I have had trouble with their names from the beginning.  I have already changed several of them and I don’t think I have the final versions yet.  Whatever they finally end up, watch this space for a release announcement.  As I mentioned before, Love and the Darkness will be a free ebook.