Please Welcome Saveet

I am Saveet, She Who Failed. My mother named me before she threw me at the unlucky acolyte of Neeshnaet’s temple who drew water from the river. My mother intended to drown me, forbidden or not, but dared not do it with the witness.

I cannot blame her.

My pupils gave me away. So large they stole the blue in my eyes, they told my story in the sorrow of my mother’s tears. If I had not failed, then I would have been born to the Ascended form, free to soar on wings before I could crawl. Instead, my back lacked nubs where the wings would force themselve out the first time I passed gas.

I peer through the trees, guarding the grass we have rolled into bales, left out to dry because we worked in the first of the winter rains. Welts mark where…

Please welcome my newest character, Saveet. I have no time to work with her, as I’m in the thick of researching agents. The goal is to find agents who represent writers in the multiple genres of my writing. Up until Isabella’s story, I’d have said Young Adult (YA) and Middle Grade (MG) were my wheelhouse, tending towards fantasy or paranormal. I love young characters coming to terms with who they are, with proving themselves to those who doubt or have cast them off or wounded them. Characters who explore, dare, test themselves.

Saveet is guarding, but not trusted because she is She Who Failed. On her watch in a previous life, something happened. When she died and was reborn, she took the lesser form of her people. If she had triumphed during her life, she would have Ascended in her next birth, those with wings. Instead of being pampered, loved, fed, she’s the lowest of the low.

This character came to me as I began raking leaves in dusk that turned to night. I can’t truly be dark, as close as I am to a shopping center for as much as I feel like I’m rural. This is how I think she “came to be.”

• I’m Agent hunting, reading the first few pages of the Kingmaker chronicles, pages or titles of NYT best-selling authors. I need to determine if I’m a voice distinct from others the agent represents, but fit in the type of writer the agent seems to like (based on my small random sample).
• I blew the leaves into a strip about 100 feet long, on Sunday. It’s thursday, and I have not had time to get them, and tomorrow is garbage pickup.  I talked myself into “one more”–a bag. So I had scooped up 6 containers worth of leaves.
• I have been told by optometrists I have an over-sized pupil, which causes my problems with contacts in lower light if the pupil expands to the defraction point of the conact, where it goes from focal area to the curve to fit to the eye. The average pupil doesn’t go that far.
• Last night, the Indians lost the 2nd game of the World Series after having won the first game.
• I finished the first draft of a crit I’m doing of writer-friend Karin Shah’s Lion’s Prey. The book reminded me of some of the patterns I saw in her YA Romance Halfling. In that book, her character Deyna fears the winged race, as she’s been given to them to be a sacrifice.
• I don’t have time for a new character. I’m working on Solve for x, I’m doing that agent hunt, I’m going to have to resume editing River Daughter, I’m doing this blog, I have the day job, and, and, and! So, of course, this character insisted I write a quick blurb to lock her in. Maybe she’ll start telling me her story now; maybe she’ll politely wait a while. I hope she’ll wait.

For those who wonder where my characters come from, this is a great example. I think my character’s are “mashups” of half a dozen or more things. My subconscious has a moment of enlightenment. If I don’t write it down, I may never remember it. Now that she’s here, she joins my other characters, waiting for me to find the time to tell their stories.