First off, I’m expanding the focus of my blog.  No longer about just parenting, it’s gonna be about… gasp… me!  And what I’m passionate about.  A huge part of my life that’s not really explored here is writing fiction.  This is the first of many posts where I’ll be sharing my characters, settings, thoughts, etc — and pretty soon, I’ll actually be posting some of my writing itself.

I virtually never write stuff set in modern times.  I tend towards your typical low-technology fantasy world stuff, but a friend and I were chatting about a more noir-ish modern setting  for an urban fantasy and I started brainstorming a character.  The idea here is that magic exists, but it’s very hush-hush.  Anything that’s in [square brackets] is very up in the air still and is apt to be altered.  This is written in the form of a note to myself basically.

Leah [Sunneborne?]

Naturally platinum blonde hair, crystalline blue eyes, pale skin; tall and slender. Appears to be of Nordic heritage.

Interested in the inner workings of things, particularly in the mind. Her own thoughts tend to be scattered — she’s a multitasker at heart and very empathic — she understands things and feels an innate connection to them. She doesn’t, however, understand herself and has few memories more than three years old, and definitely doesn’t remember anything from more than five years ago. She is a skilled artist who very often ends up drawing things either working really well together (cogs and gears), or completely deconstructed (a body in very precise, surgical pieces) when left to her own devices, but otherwise is very skilled at copying/forgery. Anything that intrigues her, she draws. What she does remember, she has a photographic memory of, and doesn’t need to draw these things in detail); nonetheless she draws because she WANTS to remember, again, sometime in the future.

She battles[?] against a constant desire to destroy things (in small terms, she picks at her nail polish, the rim of her coffee cup, shreds paper, etc). If asked, she probably wouldn’t identify these as destructive tendencies, she’d say it’s “just something I do“. She tends to trash her friendships in a dramatic, spectacular fashion, not out of any maliciousness but a desire to move on to something new. Oddly enough, she knows no one who has known her for many years other than her uncle.

She looks something like an ‘emo girl’ but is not generally introverted, over-emotional, or angsty. She is very outgoing, active, and lively; [she thrives off social interaction and doesn't hesitate to approach anyone?]

When she gets really upset, she goes ‘over the edge’ to the point where it’s somewhat frightening; she’ll often laugh it off afterwards and refuse to talk about it, saying something like “Haha, Viking blood!” (in reference to her heritage) and not wanting to address it further.

Leah tends to eat a vegetarian diet although she isn’t actually one. She very much enjoys alcohol/drugs/etc but tends not to want to imbibe them because she doesn’t like to be out of control of herself. She has a sweet tooth.  [She loves to dance and the wilder the music is (the more primal?), the more she loves it.]

She is a night owl by nature. She exists on the bare minimum necessary, lives in a small studio apartment above the museum where she works, the Konarak (named after the ‘black pagoda’ in India)  – a museum owned by an older man she calls her ‘uncle’ although, given that he’s East Indian, it’s unlikely there’s any actual blood relationship between them.

If asked why she moved to New York, she won’t say she doesn’t remember … she’ll say it’s [for the art? for her uncle?]

Insofar as magic goes, she’s an empathic type, but she would more accurately be described as a fleshcrafter. Her fascination with how things work – mechanical or biological – paired with her artistic eye and photographic memory results in her being able to manipulate and displace muscle, bone, and nerves. It’s almost like she ‘paints’ or ‘erases’ these bits from people – for example, she could sever someone’s spine, paralyzing them, and then redraw it so they can move again. The limitation here is that she needs to be physically close to a person to have any sort of impact on them, and she could, of course, make a grievous error.

Leah is quite a lot older than she appears. She maintains a sort of agelessness due to her innate nature – something of a demi-goddess/spirit/etc – but she doesn’t realize it. If pressed, she’ll give her age as being somewhere in her mid 20s because she thinks that’s how old she looks.  (The memory loss is self-inflicted, but what does she want to forget?)

Her uncle is more of a guardian than anything else; he knows her innate secrets and he, too, is a creature of magic, sworn to her. Their relationship is that of a devotee to a deity, although with her current guise and her constant memory loss [a fairly recent thing, in the past 20 years?] the role of ‘uncle’ has been more apt for him, as he provides for her without the significance of a ‘parent’ title. She does not remember her parents, but says they live overseas.

Insofar as goals, right now she doesn’t particularly have any broad ones. She enjoys her work and her art, and although she has an ever-changing circle of friends she’s not really interested in romance or establishing any sort of long-term relationship, and certainly not a family. (She NEEDS some kinda goal/vision for herself.)