Category Archives: Characters

Iolanthe Dechantagne

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Spoiler Alert

Iolanthe Dechantagne (pronounced Yo-lon-thee Day-shan-tane) is one of my favorite characters in the series.  She is a strong woman and can be a real bitch.  I hinted that there was something in her past that drove her to be what she was, and in Brechalon, we see in flashback what that was. This is also something that is resolved in Book 5: The Two Dragons.  Iolanthe really is the main character in Book 0: Brechalon and Book 1: The Voyage of the Minotaur.  She drives the action and events, and in book 1, we see the beginnings of her growth as a person.  This continues in Book 2: The Dark and Forbidding Land.  She can be ruthless and mean, and at least in Book 0, cares nothing for anyone except her older brother Terrence.

Senta Bly

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Spoiler Alert

In Brechalon, Senta is only seven years old.  Had she not been the title character of the series, I would have left her out, since the story takes place before she does anything of importance.  I’m glad that I put her in, because it gives me a chance to show a little of her world.  Senta lives with her Granny and five of her cousins in a tenenment apartment.  We see that even though she had no magical capabilities, she does have an affinity for magic and can sense it even at a distance.

Senta is described as an orphan in all the other books, but in Brechalon we get the hint that she may not be one in actuality.  It is possible that her parents simply abandoned her.  We find out the ultimate truth of this in Book 5: The Two Dragons.

Characters Outside of the Story

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Spoiler Alert


There are quite a few characters who do not appear in the story of Senta and the Steel Dragon, but are only referenced.  Here are three big ones:

Magnus the Great: Magnus was king of the Zur two thousand years before the events in the story.  He was a conqueror who carried on his father’s conquest of the continent of Sumir, more or less unifying the culture of mankind.  He occupies a place in history much like our own Julius Caesar or Alexander the Great.  At the end of his reign, his empire fell apart, partially due to the antics of his daughter Zurfina, though no one has described the exact details.  Zurfina the sorceress is the namesake of Magnus’s daughter.

Kafira Kristos: Probably the most important minor character in the book is Kafira Kristos.  She occupies the place in the world of Senta and the Steel Dragon that Jesus Christ does in ours.  Her life and martydom just after the time of Magnus the Great creates the divide between the two religions in the story–Kafirites and Zaeri.

The idea for Kafira came from a theological paper I once read.  It wondered, assuming that life existed on countless planets of the universe, would Jesus have lived and died on each one of them, or would they have had their own savior.  I decided that for the story, this world similar but not quite our own, would have its own, and further decided that she would be female.

Kafira is also the basis for a great deal of blasphemous cussing in the story.  Kafira!  Kafira Kriston! Kafira’s Cross!  Kafira’s Tits!  Kafira in a Hand Basket! and worst of all, Kafira’s Bloody Twat!

Kazia Garstone:  There are many books and writers referenced in the story, because several characters are either writers, devoted readers, or book collectors.  I have a whole list of authors and their works, some of whom I never used.  Kazia Garstone is referenced more than any of them.  She was a muck-raker as well as an author and is considered quite scandelous in polite society.  Many consider her a socialist, but her books are widely read and early editions are very valuable.

Senta and the Steel Dragon – Characters

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I’ve covered the characters in Blood Trade, Women of Power, Astrid Maxxim, His Robot Girlfriend, and His Robot Wife.  Now it’s time to look at the Senta and the Steel Dragon series.  This will be fun, because there are literally hundreds of characters in the six books.  I’ll give a full entry to the main characters and group minor characters into a single post, but I’m going to present them in the order they appear in each of the books. 

I’m looking forward to this because I get to read the books again.  I really feel like Senta and the Steel Dragon is my best writing, my best story, and my best characters.  Stay tuned tomorrow as we start with Book 0: Brechalon.

Harriet Smith

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Harriet Smith is a character in His Robot Girlfriend and His Robot Wife.  She is the daughter of the main character– Mike Smith.  Harriet is very loosely based on my own daughter, but as my daughter has happily pointed out, she would never put up with such a jerk of a husband as Harriet has, and quite honestly, unlike Mike, if my daughter did, I’d put him in the ground myself.

There are a few little inside stories that are taken from my own life with my daughter, such as her ability to talk a subject to death until my eyes glaze over, and the remembrance that they have of the time that Mike threatened to kill a kid who was bullying Harriet and almost lost his job because of it.

On the other hand, Harriet is a dental hygienist, and is fascinated with teeth, something my daughter has never shown any interest in.

Lucas Smith

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Lucas Smith is a character in His Robot Girlfriend.  He is the son of Mike Smith and his deceased wife.  While I was writing His Robot Girlfriend, my son was participating in Jr. ROTC at his high school.  Because of this, I made Lucas a soldier.  Other than that, he bares no real resemblance to my son at all.  In fact, Lucas has a relatively small part to play in the story, so his character isn’t really all that fleshed out.  He doesn’t appear in His Robot Wife at all.

Patience

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Patience is the Robot in “His Robot Girlfriend”. Just as you might expect, she’s perfect.  What I find interesting is that so many people tell me they love Patience– both male and femal readers.  I guess she’s so pleasant that she’s just hard not to like.
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Though her hair was covered with a clear plastic cap, he could see it was jet black. It matched two dark, carefully arched eyebrows and a set of long eyelashes.        She had no other body hair.  Her face could best be described as cute, with large blue eyes, a button nose, and thick voluptuous lips.  She had the kind of slender and yet curvy body that was just not possible on a real woman.   Breasts the size of apples just kind of floated there above a perfectly flat stomach.  Mike tilted his head down.  She looked anatomically complete.

Of all my characters, none went through as much of a change between first draft and published work as did Patience Smith in His Robot Girlfriend. Originally she was a rather Amazonian figure, physically very imposing, but much more submissive. Some might argue that Patience is still submissive, but I think we find out in His Robot Wife that she really isn’t. When I rewrote a series of short pieces into a long story, she needed to have much more force of personality so that she could advance the storyline of forcing Mike to change. A college professor once told me the main character is the one in the story who changes the most– and that would be Mike.

When I started rewriting, I just wasn’t happy with her physical description, so I started completely from scratch, using some of the actresses that fit that body type: Christina Ricci, Natalie Portman, Alyson Hannigan, as well as a young woman I knew as a model– so yes, there really is a Patience out there. I observed her as carefully as possible (without seeming too creepy) so that I could describe her movements and gestures– like when Patience bounces on her tip-toes or incorporates dance moves into everyday movement. Since then, I’ve tried to find a human being to at least think about when I write most of my characters. 

Her personality couldn’t be base on a real person or even a person that I though up.  She’s a robot.  Her personality couldn’t be readily apparent.  It had to be very subdued.  It had to sneak up on the reader as it sneaks up on Mike.  For that reason I think, quite a few readers find her a dull automoton– Image finding a robot as such.  I think this is a failure for me as a writer.  Still of all the fan letters I’ve ever gotten, I would say that easily 40% (written about any book) tell me how much they love Patience.

I mentioned before that the robot books are not my favorite Wesley Allison books.  That being said, they are my most popular, so I may well write another.  Oddly, I have the hardest time thinking up plots for Mike and Patience, when plots just seem to pop up for my other books.  If a new one ever does pop up though, I will write it.  I have two titles in mind that I think are appropriate, but I’m not giving them up just yet.

Mike Smith

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Over the past several weeks, I’ve talked about the characters in Blood Trade, Women of Power, and finally Astrid Maxxim and her Amazing Hoverbike.  Now it’s time to move on to His Robot Girlfriend and His Robot Wife.

The story that became His Robot Girlfriend consisted originally of some short flash fiction and the characters were not very well developed. When I decided to turn it into a book, I completely rewrote it, adding an ending. I had to turn some cardboard people into real characters. In the case of Mike Smith, I just decided to make him– me. He was a school teacher, about five years older than me, when I started, and instead of being happily married with two kids, he was a widower with two surviving children. Personality-wise, language-wise, and description-wise, he’s about as close to me as I could get. As I neared the end, I started feeling a little uncomfortable that he was so much like me, and I began working in little things that made him at least somewhat different. In the end, physically at least, Mike changes quite a bit. Patience really gets him into shape. I just started at the gym two months ago (though I don’t have a Daffodil pushing me along), so this might be a case of life imitating art.

By His Robot Wife, Mike has become a fairly sharp-dressed, in shape retired fellow.  This was a natural progression from the end of the first book.  He’s still pretty snarky.

These two books have been reviewed hundreds of times by readers posting to the net, running the gammut from over the top praise to well… the opposite of that.  I get regular fan mail about them and they are by far the most read of my books.  I have to say though, that as a reader, these are my two least favorite of my books.  The don’t have as much of ME in them as say, Voyage of the Minotaur or Tesla’s Stepdaughters.  That being said, I am certainly very proud when someone else tells me they love them.  In the coming days, I’ll talk about the other characters.  Next up: Patience.

Astrid Maxxim

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Over the past few weeks, I’ve taken a look at the characters in Blood Trade and Women of Power.  Next up, we’ll look at the characters in my latest book– Astrid Maxxim and her Amazing Hoverbike.  This is the first of a series of books aimed at young readers, though I hope readers of all ages will enjoy them.

Astrid Maxxim is a 14 year old girl inventor.  She is super smart and has been inventing since before she was 6.  She lives with her father Dr. Roger Maxxim and her mother Kate Maxxim, the former a scientist and inventor and the latter the President and CEO of Maxxim Industries.  They live in Maxxim City just outside the bounderies of the Maxxim Industries Campus.

The Other Superheroes

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In a world of superheroes, you might expect to run into a few here and there and that’s just what happens in Women of Power.

Captain Hero: Earth’s most popular hero.
Dark Defender: Mysterious protector of the night.
Strongarm: Super strong hero.
Windstorm: Master of wind and storm.
Vanguard: Leader of the Justice Brigade.
Ultrawoman: The most powerful woman on earth.
RSG: Really stretchy guy, who mostly uses his power to surreptitiously grope women.