Character Sketch . . . Lyris Jaimes

I was asked to post something about one of my characters by Jay Faulkner. And it seems that everything has conspired against me to get this post up. From IEP's to a broken front door.

That said,I've had a hard time deciding which character I would talk about today.

My fallback character would be Antony Danic. But you've heard from him and seen him before. Besides, there are so many other characters in my head that are worth mentioning. The real question is which one.

So . . . without further delay is Lyris Jaimes.

Lyris is the adopted daughter of Hannah and Owen Jaimes. Lyris was born on February 14, some eighty years from now. I honestly know the date but I can't find where I wrote that information down. She lived in Utah and attended the elementary school and middle school in Salt Lake City. At 16 she moved to Seoul Korea to train at the Academy Center. She was selected to become a sword master after petitioning the Center council. After graduation from the Seoul Academy, she applied and was assigned to London England as an agent. She spent the next six years falling in love with the city and culture. She became engaged to a man named Ethan and started to plan a wedding. One day she came home from work early to find Ethan in bed with another woman. She threw her ring at him and left. As we join her story in Latent, she is on the plane from Heathrow on her way to Salt Lake to spend some time with her parents.

Lyris was a hard character to pin down. She is independent but also has a needy streak. While Lyris existed as a character before Elite, with Elite being introduced before her presented a problem. How was I supposed to separate and keep Lyris and Elite different in the readers heads. In fact, when I introduced Elite into the story Lyris pulled a coup and gave me the silent treatment for weeks. When she did return she had morphed into her own very strong and independent character who was not just an agent, but a sword master as well. While Elite is fun loving and flighty, I needed Lyris to be determined and stubborn to a point, but not too serious. I needed the reader to see a direct contrast between the two of them. It wasn't as easy as I imagined it to be. I needed her to be strong and professional but a romantic at heart and fun to be around.

I think that Lyris is the closest to me as a character. I imagine she looks a lot like Scarlet Johhanson in the Avengers with that pretty red hair.