My Favorite Minor Character

In case you missed my very fun interview with Ilana Teitelbaum at the Huffington Post, here's the cover reveal for the next book in The Uncharted Realms, THE EDGE OF THE BLADE! I have such mad love for this cover. Of all my heroines so far, Jepp is the one whose cover comes closest to showing her as she looks in my head. She's also terribly badass, prowling along with her knives.

Love love love.

It's timely, too, because this week's topic is "My Favorite Minor Character." With the recent release of THE PAGES OF THE MIND, you'd think I'd pick Dafne. She's the librarian, who labored in the background of the first three Twelve Kingdoms books - and who proved to be such a popular secondary character that there wasn't any question of who should be the heroine of the next story, once we decided to expand the original trilogy into a spinoff series.

I love writing Dafne - in both THE PAGES OF THE MIND and in the novella that bridges the two series, THE CROWN OF THE QUEEN. But she's not my favorite minor character, mainly because Dafne never felt minor to me. She played a key role in all three princesses lives. She was just in the background because she likes it there.

No, I'd have to pick Jepp as my favorite minor character. She snuck up on me - not surprising, with her stealth skills - first appearing in THE TALON OF THE HAWK (book 3), as one of Ursula's elite guard, the Hawks. I really thought Jepp would be there and gone. As the head scout for the Hawks, she reports on what the long-range scouts have discovered.

Turns out Jepp couldn't be a simple mouthpiece. No - her mouth is WAY too big for that!

She possesses so much fire and spirit that she came vividly to life. Writing her book became a ride in itself. So much so that people expressed shock at times when I made snarky or salacious remarks in real life. I had to apologize, saying, "it's being in Jepp's head so much - the woman has no filter."

Jepp is also very cool in that she's pansexual. She's just lusty in general and finds everyone beautiful. Being in that mindset opened my mind and felt incredibly refreshing. She has no sexual hangup and loves bodies of all varieties, finding something sexy about everyone she meets.

Of course, her enthusiastic sexuality and big mouth get her in all kinds of trouble. Which made digging her out again quite the challenge.

Totally my favorite (once) minor character.