Category Archives: Characters

Voyage of the Minotaur: Iolanthe

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Spoiler Alert

Iolanthe Dechantagne is in some ways the main character in The Voyage of the Minotaur.  She is very much the same character that she is in Brechalon, at least in the beginning.  By the end of the story, she has undergone some subtle changes, mostly a result of the isolation which is in part her own making.

Iolanthe has had troubles in her past, but during the course of this story, she falls in love, is seperated from her lover, moves to a primitive colony on a distant colony, leads the colony, fights off frightening aborigines and has to deal with one brother who is a drug addict and one who is possibly a serial killer.  One of my favorite scenes is when Iolanthe finds a blood-soaked shirt in Augie’s cabin, and in a characteristicaly Dechantagne move, tosses it overboard to cover it up.

I suppose Iolanthe is a character people love to hate, but I just love her.  I think I have more fun writing her than any of my other creations.  As I was writing this, I would read the completed chapters to my wife and always enjoyed it when she said, “Iolanthe is such a bitch.”

Voyage of the Minotaur is availble wherever fine ebooks are sold, and you can find links to it in paperback to the right.

The Voyage of the Minotaur: Characters

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I finished discussing the characters of Senta and the Steel Dragon Book 0: Brechalon.  This week, I’ll be discussing the characters in the Voyage of the Minotaur.  Many of the characters are the same in both books, but in some cases they have grown from one to the other.  Each of the books in the series take place several years apart– Here is a timeline.

1897  Book 0: Brechalon
1899  Book 1: The Voyage of the Minotaur
1901  Book 2: The Dark and Forbidding Land
1902/1903  Book 3: The Drache Girl
1905  Book 4: The Young Sorceress
1907  Book 5: The Two Dragons

Each of these postings will carry a spoiler alert, because hopefully I’ll be getting into a few character secrets.

Brechalon: Magicians

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Spoiler Alert

And finally, we have our last characters from Senta and the Steel Dragon Book 0: Brechalon.

Madame De La Rosa: Madame De La Rosa is a very old seer. She is an expert in divination, and it is she that Smedley Bassington comes to for information. This is her only appearance in the story.

Amadea Jindra: In Brechalon we meet Amadea Jindra as Madame De La Rosa’s apprentice. She is a major part of the storyline in Book 3: The Drache Girl. I’ll fill in more about her when I get to that book.

Professor Merced Calliere: Calliere is a brilliant scientist and inventor. He is Edison, Westinghouse, and Babbage all rolled intellectually into one, but his attitude is all Tony Stark. He is a happy go lucky academic, who is clearly smitten with Iolanthe, though whether she thinks of him as anything more than another resource remains to be seen.

That’s it for Brechalon. In a day or so, we’ll start looking at the characters from The Voyage of the Minotaur. Many of them are the same as this book, but two years have passed and things change.

Brechalon: Very Minor Characters

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Spoiler Alert

Here are the most minor characters who appear in Brechalon.  Though all are minor, some of them have more importance to the plot than others.

Barrymore: Barrymore is one of the butlers in the Dechantagne household.  I needed a name that conveyed a kind of patrician dignity (think Lionel, not Drew).

Marni: Marni is one of the Dechantagne maids.  There are quite a few household servants, but not all of them get names.

Blackmoore: Blackmoore is a drug dealer– Terrence’s go to drug dealer.  He is fairly influencial (feared) in his world of Black Bottom.  I don’t know if Blackmoore is his first or last name, I assume, last.  His name is an homage to Blackmoor, the D&D adventure by David Arneson, who passed away while I was writing this book.

Mika and his brothers: Mika and his brothers are street toughs, who though they are minor characters, create an interesting chain of events in the story.  I tried to write Blackmoore and Mika with an Irish brogue.  I don’t know if it came through or not.

Brechalon: Flashback Characters

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Spoiler Alert

There are several characters in Senta and the Steel Dragon Book 0: Brechalon that appear entirely or mostly in flashbacks.

Smedley Bassington: Wizard Bassington appears mostly in flashbacks though he appears in the present in one chapter.  Bassington is an important character in the series and plays a large part in Books 3 and 5.  He is a paramour of Zurfina and he is a government wizard.  He is also, as we find out, a great manipulator.  I had a very clear image of what Bassington looked like.  His appearance is based on Stephen King.  I set up my copy of the Dark Tower to the author’s photograph whenever I was writing him.  I had been carrying the name Smedley around for a while, and it just seemed to fit.  Except for his final scene in this book, he’s not that interesting, I don’t think.  He has his part to play, and plays it.  I really enjoyed writing him in Book 3: The Drache Girl.  He is a great foil for Senta.

Master Akalos: Master Akalos was the Dechantagne tutor, a cowardly little man, and not very important to the story.  He is referenced once or twice, but Brechalon is the only place we see him, and that in a flashback.

Iphegenia Dechantagne: The mother of Terrence, Iolanthe, and Augie is murdered by her husband, as we see in a flashback in Book 0.  I don’t think she is ever mentioned again, but she plays an important role nonetheless, in shaping the Dechantagne siblings.  I love the name Iphegenia, and have always been fascinated by the myth of Agamemnon’s sacrificing her.  I would have used the name somewhere, but it fits here.

Lucius Dechantagne: The father of the Dechantagne’s, he is only spoken of in the later books, having died some time before Brechalon, and having lived without facing real punishment for his wife’s murder, though it does apparently cost him his standing in society.

Jolon Bendrin: As we find out in book 0 flashbacks, Jolon Bendrin is a rapist.  He is mentioned only briefly in book 1, but finally makes a satisfying appearance in the flesh in book 5.

Simon Mudgett: The man who was in bed with Iphegenia Dechantagne when her husband kills her.  He is mentioned once more in the series.  I pulled Simon out of nowhere, but Mudgett I have been saving for a while.  The name comes from Herman Webster Mudgett (aka H. H. Holmes), America’s first serial killer.

Brechalon: Prisoner 89

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Spoiler Alert

Prisoner 89 is Zurfina the Sorceress.  We find her at the beginning of book 0 imprisoned in Schwarztogrube, the prison for magic users run by the Kingdom of Greater Brechalon.  During the course of the story, we see her capture and the events surrounding it in flashbacks.  Of course, Zurfina’s sole goal in the story is to escape the prison any way she can, and of course the first way she tries is magic.  The fact that she manages to pull together some pretty intense magic in a supposedly magic-proof location hints at her true power.

The story here is an example of one of the problems with writing a prequel.  Zurfina’s imprisonment isn’t disclosed in the regular story (books 1-5) until well into book 5, but readers of book 0 know it all before hand.  This would be a big clue to one of the major secrets in the series.  Fortunately, it isn’t revealed until book 5 either.

Zurfina is prisoner 89 because I was writing it while working on my master’s degree and I used my student number.  I accidental transposed it.  I was actually student 98, but I think 89 sounds better.

Yuah Korlann

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Spoiler Alert

Yuah Korlann is one of the most important characters in the Senta and the Steel Dragon series.  She has probably the most important arc for any of the characters and it is one of the most tragic in some ways.  It is a story of rise and then fall.

When we meet Yuah in Book 0: Brechalon, she is Iolanthe Dechantagne’s dressing maid, a position for which there is no up side.  She has grown up in the Dechantagne household and even attended lessons with Terrence, Iolanthe, and Augie when they were children.  She loves Augie like a brother, hopelessly pines for Terrence and her relationship with Iolanthe is complicated to say the least.  Iolanthe seems to enjoy putting Yuah in her place.

Yuah is a Zaeri, the minority religion, and this poses problems for her, especially considering there seem to be few Zaeri of marrying age aroud.

When I wrote the first draft of The Voyage of the Minotaur, Yuah was named Ewa.  I changed it to match her father’s name and because I kept mispronouncing it in my head.  I like the name though, so someday I’m going to have a character named Ewa.

Saba and Yadira Colbshallow

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Spoiler Alert

Saba Colbshallow and his mother Yadira Colbshallow are characters in the Senta and the Steel Dragon series, beginning with Book 0: Brechalon.

Yadira Colbshallow is the Dechantagne cook and has served since she was quite young.  She is a widow, with one son upon whom she dotes– Saba.  In book 0 and book 1, Mrs. Colbshallow is a minor character who pops up to offer advice or information.

Saba Colbshallow is one of the major characters in the series, though he occupies a very minor role in Book 0: Brechalon.  When we meet him here, he has just turned 14 and is being given his first assignments in the household.  Part of what I like so much about Saba is that he changes so much.  He grows and changes and so he occupies a different role in each of the books.

Zeah Korlann

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Spoiler Alert

Zeah Korlann is one of the main characters in the Senta and the Steel Dragon story, and plays a prominent part in Book 0: Brechalon.  When we first meet Zeah, he is the head butler for the Dechantagne family, having served in that position since he was a young man.  His father and grandfather also worked for the Dechantagnes, as does his daughter Yuah.

Zeah is a member of the minority Zaeri religion and this defines him.  He also, at least in the early books, has a pronounced stammer.  This speech impediment is exacerbated by proximity to his employer Iolanthe Dechantagne.  Zeah is one of the few genuinely decent and nice people in the story and he makes a great foil to play off many of the others– Iolanthe, Terrence, and even his own daughter.

Senta’s Family

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Spoiler Alert

Senta’s immediate family appears in Book 0: Brechalon and Book 1: The Voyage of the Minotaur.  Some of them make appearances later in the series.

Granny (Admeta Mae Goose): I didn’t use Granny’s name until book 5.  I just liked that her name was Granny Goose.  Granny loves kids and has cobbled together a family of her own grandchildren and the children of a couple of neices and nephews.  All the kids in the household are related, but not necessarily siblings.

Bertice Haver is the oldest and is already working in Brechalon. 
Geert McCoort is closest in age to Senta, and has to go to work in Book 0.  His last name is a nod to author Frank McCourt, though I changed the spelling.  His older brother is Maro McCoort.
Didrika Goose is a toddler who joins the family in Book 0 when her parents die.  Her baby sister is Ernst Goose, and is still in a crib in Book 1.