I have started collecting pictures of people that I feel resemble my characters. I would really like to find someone who is great at drawing people, and who likes to draw just for fun, and get that person to draw my characters for me. (I need someone who likes to draw for fun because I can’t afford to pay them, but if I ever go up in the world, I will take them with me.)
I would like to have the entire series done in colored pencil. I don’t want abstract or anything out of proportion, but I would like them to be a little indistinct. I’m going to have to comb through the internet, because back when I was in college, and was really into anime, I saw a series of pictures of anime characters done exactly the way I want the pictures of my characters done.
You know, come to think of it, I know someone who was trained as a comic-book artist, and I know he’s capable of drawing people in normal proportions because I’ve seen some of his more serious work. I know him through medieval re-enacting, which means that I could work out a deal with him to trade something other than cash for the pictures. I sew, embroider and do three dozen other things, so surely we can trade talent.
Speaking of finding pictures of my characters, today my mind turned back to my book on Rose, and I was inspired to start writing the story of her wedding to James. I did some searching online today for pictures of 1920’s-era weddings and I found one that I really like.
I think I’m going to really like writing Rose’s story. Not only do I love the way she and James interact, but her book will cover the years from 1924-1944, which was a very interesting two decades. I’ll get to cover their reaction to things like the stock market crash in 1929 and Pearl Harbor in 1941. I’ll have to think about what reaction the Council will have to the Depression, in terms of finances, because it affected economies across the globe, and vampires have a lot of money because they invest. Did they loose much during the Crash? Were groups told to be more conservative of their money? Were individuals encouraged to work, if they could get jobs?
We don’t see much benefit today in being a Yaechahre (what does Kalyn get out of it, really?), but the Depression is one of those times when being a Yaechahre was an obvious benefit. The groups own all houses outright (they never mortgage anything), which means their Yaechahre never lost their houses to foreclosure. And Yaechahre are never allowed to go hungry or suffer, so even if they lost their jobs, they didn’t have to stand in bread lines, or their children go without shoes or coats in the winter. In Rose’s book, we can watch things get progressively worse in the outside world, while things within the group maintain some semblance of normalcy—thus highlighting the benefits of being Yaechahre.
There’s also the fun of watching the evolution of technology: electric lights (which still weren’t common in the South in 1924), refrigerators, the Earhart and Lindbergh flights, records and radio, electric appliances… all sorts of novelties.
Keri M. Peardon 