Tag: Yvette

Which character is the author?

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Among the many odd questions an author is often asked one of the oddest is some variation on “Which character is you?”

It’s so very strange to be asked this – because depending how you look at it, either all of them or none; unless, of course, I happen to have a character who is a shy author named Jaye Em Edgecliff that lives in Georgia and writes teen fiction.

On the one hand, they are all me.  They do, after all, come from my own hand and head.  They may be inspired by any number of things from notions and ideas to other fictional characters I encounter in my reading or watching a movie to real people I’ve met or seen or read about.  In the end, though, they’re my perceptions of those people.  Even if we assume the ficton view of reality wherein all of these characters are very much alive and real somewhere, it doesn’t change that the story on the page is my perception of those very real people.  By that measure, all the characters are me.  They’re all my perceptions of right and wrong, my perceptions of beauty and kindness, my perceptions of humour and sorrow, and so on.  How I narrate the story is going to highlight those perceptions – they’ll paint who is or isn’t supposed to be a villain and who is or isn’t in love with whom.

More accurately, though, they are a part of me.  My own dreams, desires, thoughts, feelings, experiences, darknesses, prejudices, anger, sorrow, laughter, and all go into shaping the words on the page and little pieces of those go into each little person in the dreamworld of the fiction.

In that sense – unless one of the characters shares my name, my description, etc. none of them are me.  I don’t share a religion with any one of my characters; my political and philosophical viewpoints do not perfectly align with any one of my characters.  Yvette and Lucas like eggplant, Lauren does not – neither do I, but that doesn’t make Lauren me.

I’m not sure what the point in asking such a question is.  I have written characters who share nothing with me, personally, beyond morphologically – they’re human shaped, not even actually human, just shaped this way.  I often write characters with different beliefs, different outlooks on life and everything else; major and minor characters, protagonist and antagonist alike.  I assume that this is mostly true of many authors.  I suppose we all, somewhere along the way, do write our views and thoughts into things.  This character or that one will say some brilliant line that perfectly parallels our own views.  Sometimes, if we feel strongly on a matter, we might write a protagonist who shares fully in our outlooks and thoughts; still, I do not believe that means the characters are ourselves – I’ve yet to meet any author who is writing purely from personal experience, using the Dragnet names changed and slightly tweaked reality to write their novels.  Oh, they exist, certainly, but I believe there’s a good reason they’re rare:  most people who live that interesting a life write memoirs, not novels.

So, in answer to the question – no, neither Lauren, Sally, Yvette, Lucas, Allison, Sarah, Lisa, Lucy, nor anyone else you have met or ever will meet in my stories is me, unless there’s ever a quiet author named Jaye … then maybe, but she’s shy and avoids the narrative camera like it’s carrying a plague.

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Now & Forever ABCs (Yvette)

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Doctor Yvette Angelica Conners née Swanson

13 October 1967
Lutheran (ELCA)

Yvette is one of ten children and grew up, almost literally, on the Canada-Washington border.  She was educated at University of Washington and then at the National College of Naturopathic Medicine in Portland.

She met Lucas while they were in school, and they were married quickly after.

Yvette is a quiet, reserved person.  She doesn’t get emotional easily, and she takes a cool, collected, rather logical approach to her life and the universe.  She has few wants, and they all revolve around her family being safe, healthy, and happy; the rest of her happiness revolves around caring for her patients.

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Now & Forever ABCs (Olivia, Alphonz & Lorenzo)

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Olivia Fiona, Alphonz Hector, and Lorenzo Orfeo Abategiovanni

9 October 1981 & 14 June 1968
Methodist

Lorenzo is the elder brother of the twins, Alphonz and Olivia.  Lorenzo and Olivia own the little bistro in Falcon Grove called Lorenzo’s, all three share in the work of operating it.

The trio were born in New York, though when the twins were very young their parents died and they came out west to live with their aunt Helen in Portland.

Olivia has always had a keen head and eye for business, Lorenzo was a master in the kitchen, and Alphonz preferred to work with his siblings than for some uncaring boss.  Lorenzo had another small restaurant in Portland, and Olivia was often helping him keep his books and giving him very sound advice even before she was out of eighth grade.  By the time the twins graduated they were full employees of Lorenzo’s restaurant.

While the trio were very fond of their aunt and the home they had with her, they were none of them extremely fond of the Portland area and elected to leave.  Lorenzo hired a manager and a chef for his place there and left Helen in charge of overseeing that it was run properly and they moved north in 2004.

That year Olivia started taking ill.  She was diagnosed with cancer and started on treatments.  Between radiation and chemo Olivia was feeling just as ill, and by 2009 she was tired of them.  She begged her family to stop taking her to the treatments, and was told she had only months to live.

Lucas and Yvette learnt of the young woman’s story and offered to try a treatment that could possibly help — some people had successfully held other advanced cancers at bay with it, though none with her particular form and advanced stage, that they were aware of.

The treatments proved successful, though Lucas and Yvette still refuse to accept payment for it — they had refused initially since they couldn’t even promise it would help (though it certainly couldn’t hurt), and now because they feel it unethical to start charging her simply because they discovered they were right.  Olivia is still dying, but she has an estimated couple of years now instead of only a few months.

The brothers, who adore their sister and have always been extremely protective of, tend to treat the Conners family with a certain VIP status, trying in whatever ways they can to show their gratitude for every day they still have with Olivia.

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Now & Forever ABCs (Maureen)

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Maureen Violet Conners

30 November 1989
Lutheran (ELCA)

Maureen is a student at Harvard University where she is taking her first strides toward becoming a paediatric psychiatrist.

Maureen has always been a highly academic young woman, and currently is taking as full a course load as her school will allow and each semester, including summer, that is offered.  She plans to get ten years of school in, at least, six.

She volunteers her time with tutoring her favourite subject, English, and by this met her boyfriend, Kaede.

Emmy, as Maureen is often called by Gramps (short for Emily Post), is a fastidious and very Proper young woman.  She has always, even at a young age, preferred to dress very well and very neatly, she took her lessons in etiquette and decorum to heart, and is always well spoken and polite.  Though her maternal grandfather was something of a corruptive influence, possibly genetically, as she has his habit of calling people by random nicknames — though, unlike him, she doesn’t do it to everyone nor in any and sundry circumstance.

By her own opinion she got next to no colour from her parents.  With regards to features she got her mother’s striking blue eyes, her father’s blonde hair — though she did get a red tint from Yvette, and through an interesting blending of skin types she barely freckles let alone tan.  Makeup quickly became as automatic to Maureen, therefore, as breathing; this has lead to teasing from Lauren and a few of her friends with variations on the idea of calling her a China doll.

Many people unaccustomed to her find Maureen a contradiction.  Dressed as immaculately and primly as she is, they would expect her to be stuck up or a bit prissy at worst, certainly very squeamish and reluctant to go near even a little dust, but she isn’t.  She is a very personable young woman who, while conscious of her clothes and careful of actually ruining them, is largely unconcerned with soiling her wardrobe; she will gladly engage in work on the farm, or help her parents in the garden, or perform household chores without the faintest hesitation.

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Now & Forever ABCs (Lucas)

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Doctor Lucas Garcia Conners

15 May 1966
Lutheran (ELCA)

Lucas is an N.D. and certified for surgery.  He was educated at the University of Washington and at the National College of Naturopathic Medicine in Portland.  He co-owns and operates a naturopathic, homeopathic, and acupunture clinic in downtown Seattle with Yvette.

He tends to look the part of the the hippie doctor with his long hair pulled into a ponytail, and his tendency to dress for comfort rather than professionalism.  His office is even painted in a tie-dye style.  He’s rather popular as a children’s doctor due to his colourful office, and his silly sense of humour and fun — his office is full of toys and odds and ends that he readily lets his patients play with.

In his personal life he is a devoted and loving husband and father, his entire universe revolves around Yvette, Maureen, and Lauren, and for them he would build a ladder to the moon if they took it into their heads to ask for one.

He is an equally devoted physician, taking care to remember his patients and their issues and treatments and speak directly to them rather than always consulting charts.  His memory isn’t perfect, but it’s fairly good, and he has a few magician’s tricks to give the impression it’s better than it is.  Still, he has a reputation among those who’ve met him of really getting to know them, of being willing to help them at all hours of all days, and generally treat them in a way that puts them in mind of the old country doctor in old west stories and TV shows about rural turn of the century towns.

It surprises many, especially those who know how he grew up, just how easily and quickly he took to computerised records, but it was at his suggestion and initiative that the clinic was heavily modernised with all paper records digitised, and all future records kept on computers which have been kept well up to date, though it was Yvette’s idea that the equipment in the place be updated such that all images and similar were processed to computer rather than film — Lucas has a great fondness for darkrooms and development, so hadn’t been in any hurry to modernise in that regard.

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Now & Forever ABCs (Gramps & the Witch)

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Albert Lee Swanson & Claudette Isis Swanson née Baardsson

10 October 1935 & 2 June 1933
Anglican & Church of All Worlds

The couple who brought Yvette into the world, and an eccentric pair.  Gramps, as far back as Yvette can recall, tended to give people names to suit a mix of who the person was and his own unusual sense of humour.  The Witch, on the other hand, felt that children should actually have names — so insisted on giving permanent names to her children, and also insisted that, given that they’d have to live with them, that it should sound like a name rather than an appellation.  Gramps has never once called one of his children by their given name — and his wife has heard him utter her name few times in the decades they’ve been together.

The pair live in an old hotel that’s been converted to a large home in northern-most Washington, part of their property is possibly in Canada in fact.

Married in 1951 the pair had ten children over the course of twenty-three years.  Gramps has always been talented with woodcarving and carpentry, so owned a furniture making shop and did contracting work while the Witch, who had always been immensely fascinated by the various uses of plants, opened an herbalist shop which specialised in beauty supplies and cosmetics.  Both businesses were successful enough that all of their children were able to go to college, though only eight did, and all of them got scholarships — so the education money went to helping each child into their first homes or other similar boosts to starting adulthood.

The Witch was raised in a household that, ostensibly, was Unitarian but was largely agnostic or Deist in specifics.  She and her siblings were encouraged to study philosophy and theology, their father believing it gave a better understanding of the world, people, and morals & ethics.  She is well versed in Judaism, several forms of Islam, Buddhism, Taoism, can quote the Bible in Greek, and has a firm grounding in several forms of Hindu.  When Otter and Morning Glory Zell founded the Church of All Worlds she studied it as avidly leading to her rising within the ranks of its priesthood.  Gramps, on the other hand, continues to attend a small Anglican church near his home any Sunday he can and makes a stubborn point of going on Easter and Christmas, and insisting even more stubbornly that his wife, and any of their sundry children, children-in-laws, and their children join them whenever they’re visiting on those days.

Among their various hippie friends the pair are sometimes seen as oddly old fashioned.  Gramps and the Witch were fairly strict with their children in terms of expectations of their behaviour.  The girls were, at the Witch’s adamant insistence, thoroughly taught etiquette, diction, posture, and just about every other womanly art that would be taught in a finishing school.  Gramps followed her example — every one of their sons was to be a perfect gentleman (he stopped short at actually making them learn to use a sword, given that he couldn’t use one either).  In seemingly stark contrast to this the parents were exceedingly open with their children and the Witch even educated those of her daughters and sons interested in the subject on the contents of her copy of the Kama Sutra and other related works — not practical demonstrations, mind, only theory; practice was up to them to arrange.

Eventually the couple has retired, giving over his business to a friend and hers to one of their children, and are spending their twilight years enjoying their grandchildren and great-grandchildren, spoiling them as much and as often as possible.

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