Now that you’ve met the Hunters, the Memory Haints, and the Medicaments, it’s time to take a look at who lives on the Homestead with Cent. These two join later, while Cent’s actually away, but they quickly become family too. Meet Jenner the carpenter and his fire elemental spouse, Flick. The latter is the first elemental you’ll meet in Keeping House, but I guarantee it won’t be the last. Oh, no. You’ve five more to meet during this last week.
Keeping House: An Appalachian Paranormal Fantasy, novel two in the Appalachian Elementals series will be released on July 8th, 2019, and in preparation for the release, I’m sharing my characters gallery, my rogues’ gallery of sorts (seriously, many of them warrant the title of rogue) in groups of 2-6. The overall gallery is very much a labor of love. It’s where I’ve gone when I didn’t know what came next, what one my of my characters might be thinking, how they might react. It’s where I’ve been honing my design skills for the past year.
Beside each character image, you’ll learn a bit about them, including their ages, occupations, gender identity and sexuality. Why the last two? Well, Keeping House is queer fantasy as much as it’s Appalachian Fantasy, meaning the main character, Cent Rhodes is queer and many but certainly not all of her friends identify somewhere along the LGBTQIA+ spectrum. As for her family, some are queer, but just as many are allies.
On to the gallery.
Prereading notes: Elementals have no gender, and all elementals are capable of shapeshifting into whatever form they wish, but they often take human-like forms when their lovers/ companions are humans. This is the form represented in the gallery.
Name: Jenner Johnston
Age: 40 (B: 1978)
Point of Origin: Athens, Ohio
Sexuality: heterosexual
Gender Identity: cis
Pronouns: he/him
Profession: carpenter, farrier
Married to: Flick (fire)
Quote: “Coffee ready? I shouldn’t be this sociable until I’ve had a cup or two.”
Name: Flick
Age: a young 3.2 million
Point of Origin: Deep in the Earth
Pronouns: they/them
Occupation: carpenter’s assistant, maintaining a well-heated forge
Married to: Jenner Johnston
Quote: “Do it right or not at all. That’s our motto.”
What’s next? Tomorrow you’ll meet The Gaines family: Crystal, Adam, and their daughters Francie and Eva. You’ll also meet, in a separate post, Ganolesgi. Their name means breezy in Tsalagi (Cherokee) so you get three guesses as to what element they’re made of, but the first two don’t count.
Right now, the ebook version of Cleaning House, the first installment in the Appalachian Elementals series, is available for only $.99, so get your copy now.
Cleaning House is available at Amazon, Kobo, Smashwords, iBooks, Barnes & Noble, and most other ebook retailers.
