This is the art I received for my main character.
In a space-age afterlife where your body (and some relevant aspects of your mind) is determined by what your psyche wants, Chris Foster becomes a very young child again so they can deal with trauma. Here they choose the name “Solemn” and embark on their personal journey of self-discovery, mental health tools, and what it means to have real, loving family for the first time.
But when political activists kill off the seraphs (the afterlife’s demigod social workers and keepers of the peace) it is up to Solemn— who for non-convoluted reasons has become a seraph themself— and their newfound family and others who will fight to restore the compassion and dignity of this afterlife.
My novel is in its third draft and it’s super rich and I love to talk about it any chance I get. Ask questions or offer to look at the public draft, please! 💙
this sounds fascinating!
I’ve only ever once commissioned art of my characters before (just one, and it was a rough sketch with some canons from a video game) but I know it made me really excited and it’s been my phone’s lock screen for four years. I have no artistic talent so to see one of my creations come to life still makes me smile.
what made Chris choose the name Solemn? what made you as the writer decide to write this kind of main character? who are the political activists? and lastly, what made you choose the afterlife as a setting?
those are just some questions that came to me off the top of my head! I know how much I love talking about writing so I wanted to give you the space to gush and chat about yours.
Heck yeah!
Alright, so. I actually had a horrible childhood since infancy, and Chris/Solemn is semi-autobiographical. The novel explores not so much the events in Solemn’s history, as how it affects them now, focusing on healing and on the craving for loving family that they had since they were small. Like Chris, I also fantasized from a very young age about being rescued from abuse, neglect, and abandonment by strangers, who would pity, love, and care for me. And so the novel explores Chris discovering and grappling with attachment disorder among the other issues. When I was that age, I also wanted to be Don Bluth; and I spent most of my life writing, drawing, and creating music that channeled my trauma, feelings, and what I was learning into art.
My novel’s spiritual predecessors always had that intelligent child character. I both wanted them to be a “woobie” child, but also able to have experienced enough to become “broken”, and to learn to heal. And I wanted the power fantasy where they saved their family and the world. While in previous ideas the setting was different, I ultimately settled on an afterlife to raise the stakes; to allow the setting to more naturally encourage talk about healing, self-improvement, and important timely topics; and to allow a true “happily ever after” wish fulfillment. So this afterlife the novel takes place in now has really cool themes and features. Reincarnation pods that determine your new body based on what your psyche wants, all situated on the space station Advent Terminus. Spaceships, sub-light travel, psychic features and tech that work with them, and a lot of domestic technology that makes living and productivity easier. I wouldn’t call this “hard sci-fi” by a long shot, but it is pretty well-thought-out, grounded, and pragmatic. Seraphs themselves have science fantasy powers— telepathy between seraphs (which has a really cool explanation that factors into the plot in several ways), and “ionic fields” they form around their bodies or other objects. The ionic fields separate them from outside matter and forces, which allows for defying gravity (flight), telekinesis, near-invulnerability, and sub-light travel at .9x. Spaceships and Advent Terminus also use ionic fields to keep in atmosphere, maintain gravity, leave or enter a planet’s atmosphere easily, and travel at .3x.
For Chris’s new name, they didn’t want anyone from Earth to remember them. They wanted to start anew. The first night that Chris’s new foster mom brings them home, she validates Chris’s bad life and their deserving to be loved. She then reads them a poem about appreciating the duality of a bad day, called “Sing a Solemn Song”. So they choose the name “Solemn”.
As for the political side, seraphs separate humans to one of four of the five planets based on simple and pragmatic definitions of their ethical and emotional maturity, and encourage individuals to improve themselves so they can “ascend” to another planet in the solar system if they wish. Seraphs are social workers and keepers of the peace, and only get involved in government if human rights are being systemically violated. This system allows people to become better so they can move away from a more problematic and exploitative planet/society, potentially to the paradisical planet. But peoples’ lives are generally pretty good regardless of the planet, due to the foundations seraphs set and make sure are still working, as well as the seraphs’ social work when needed.
So about the planet separation. Eris is for people who believe they are good, or want to be good, but who struggle to challenge their flaws. They might be, say, your grandma who goes to church and helps with charity, but who believe interracial marriage and trans people are bad. Or they might be self-righteous against, say, people who do casual drug usage. Nemesis however is for people who know they are harmful and simply don’t yet care. So Nemesis is a soft prison where people have their own homes and jobs, but seraphs have more say in laws and they make sure people are separated better so they’re not harming others. So what if people from Nemesis want to become better, so they are allowed to leave? Well, a lot of people on Eris don’t believe in forgiveness or in rehabilitation, and they often rely on platforms of self-righteousness and fear. And KAPE is the most-prominent group of such people, and are political activists. And our husband-and-wife main villain duo are at the head of this.
What’s more is this issue extends to Solemn’s new family— though I won’t spoil why. Something happens concerning it, and… long story short, Solemn becomes a seraph. But when the seraphs are killed by the main antagonists and KAPE, Solemn isn’t affected nearly as much due to the psychic feature I vaguely mentioned before, and they are the last seraph remaining. Until our villain duo kidnaps Solemn to read their mind and learn how it happened (same way minds are read when first arriving so seraphs can present the body you want to you, and place and help you when you are reincarnated). Then the husband becomes a beefed up seraph, and the spouses and their KAPE military continue their war on the world order.
The villains, Solemn’s family members, and the supporting characters (including their helper android Iota) are all really richly-developed and cool, too, and have their own major struggles that factor into the story heavily. But that’s another post altogether.
If you have any more questions, I would love to answer them. I love getting questions or feedback. I also upload a semi-public WIP draft as I work on it, if you want to see any of it. I warn though that it’s still cheesy or unfocused at a few points.
hey! sorry replying to this took so long, I have had some mental health struggles.
I can definitely relate to writing about those topics. I feel like it’s a really good way to cope, because it’s what I used my entire childhood as well, but also to explore those issues in a controlled environment. although I wouldn’t call it someone extending “pity” towards you, you’re seeking sympathy, and I know it’s easy to fall into that trap but wording is important!
I used to always write younger characters (though they were always teenagers) being taken care of by an older character, always an adoptive sibling situation, because I have no siblings but always wanted one. parents were never part of it. I think you and I want the same things in our writing – the healing aspect is really important instead of breaking the character over and over, which is something I see a lot of writers enjoy in the spaces I used to be in. it’s something I think is important for people to see (even though I don’t write publicly anymore), especially people who might be going through their own struggling.
I envy your ability to write sci-fi, I’ve never been able to write it in a way I was happy with. my favorite has always been “soft sci-fi” or “sci-fi that makes sense but we’re not going to do any math or science okay?” hahaha. just because unless it’s pretty simple (which yours sounds like it is) my poor single brain cell fries itself trying to remember and parse everything.
when you say reincarnation pods that determine what your new body is based on what psyche wants, does that mean even if people reincarnate, they don’t leave the afterlife? and also, does that mean you don’t really have any control over it? so someone who, say, is not in touch with or not open to admitting they’re something (like take gender identity for example) might end up having to stare that in the face? if so, I think that’s really cool! it makes for a really interesting plot to explore, even if you as the author don’t end up taking that route for any of the characters.
I love that choice for Chris’s new name! Solemn is also just really pretty. the choice to use a name change to represent starting anew is also very nice.
when you say “beefed up seraph”, what does that entail? extra powers?
and can you tell me more about Solemn’s new family? I love secondary/supporting characters. I have a curse with them ending up my favorites.
I’m not currently in a place where I would be very good at reading the WIP, but I do really appreciate you extending the offer. I understand if you can’t reveal too much because of you working on it, too! and of course, I wish you lots of luck and inspiration in that process.
I freaking love to talk about the novel and I will keep talking as often as people ask questions ♥
Okay, so, the computers called KOM-40s actually read peoples’ psyches when those people are in heliapods. There’s no other way to read minds. All the KOM-40s and heliapods are located on Advent Terminus. Only the seraphs know the full tech of both the KOM-40s and the heliapods, and the computers have seraph-exclusive biometric access.
When people die on Earth, their consciousnesses are beamed to a heliapod on Advent Terminus and they are reincarnated. And in the afterlife, if you die, are injured beyond full healing, or if you get trapped, your body dissipates completely and your consciousness gets beamed to Advent Terminus. So if you dissipate/die in the afterlife, you stay in the afterlife.
Now, when people are getting reincarnated— either the first time or any other time— the KOM-40s completely read (or update) the information in the person’s mind and determines what people want to be— and that includes meta stuff like “I want to be this the most; but I have these insecurity issues, so I’m not going to do that yet”. As an example of a meta, in the Reedtree center chapter, an important supporting character shills her book called “The Joys of Gradual Transitioning” to a new arrival who is beginning to fully discover they are trans, but weren’t reincarnated as trans when they arrived. The book is basically about how many people will enjoy the process of gradually changing sex— or otherwise improving your body— over instantly getting the one you want via heliapod.
I would also like to add that seraphs always offer consent to people when in the psychnet before their new body starts being created— not because people would say no to the body decided on, but because people think differently about results if they aren’t at least offered the ability to say “no”. And consent is very important to seraphs, even though they do have to make a few hard rules— especially about planetary placement— to make sure peace and order is kept.
Same powers, just stronger. The idea of new powers might sound cool, but I really don’t want to break my universe’s rules/pragmatism, nor throw a fastball at the readers.
Oh, wow, uh. There’s a lot to say! First is Solemn’s new foster mom, Lu Montsely. Lu always took things seriously and tried her hardest on Earth, and got frustrated when things didn’t go her way. Her dad was also an overbearing parent. When she had her kid on Earth, she was a frustrated parent as well and didn’t understand what to expect of children. So she abused her toddler and one day lost control of her emotions and beat him to death. She was shanked shortly after in prison when the inmates discovered what she did. And when her husband Tony learned of that, he drove off a cliff. Lu has spent the last hundred years on Eleos learning to be kind, patient, and wise— both so she can distance herself from who she was, and also so she can finally be good enough to join her loving husband who ascended to Themis 70 years ago. She’s now fostering Solemn— and soon mentoring her niece Jessi— as her final test. And Solemn didn’t know about Lu’s history until after Solemn was fostered (they learned about it a few days later at their foster party, where Lu’s dad Tom— who resents Lu and didn’t want her to foster at all— harshly revealed it). As Solemn becomes more accustomed to being allowed to have feelings and a say in their life situations, they realize pretty explosively that this foster situation feels unfair to them. I won’t say what happens after, but it’s also an example of how seraphs— while objective, good, and thorough— can’t see the future and still take risks sometimes. Either way, much of Lu’s family still doesn’t accept Lu no matter how far she’s come. Lu works at a community center and charity called The Reedtree, and it’s a super cool chapter and I don’t have time to talk about it in this post. As part of Lu’s exploration of meditation and inner-peace, she got into tai chi and later other forms of kung fu, which she practices along with meditation as part of her daily routine.
Jessi Vargas is Lu’s niece. She’s a Mexican-American chaotic-neutral. She kinda hates people and you really get an understanding of why. She hates authority, she loves thrills, and she’ll risk hers and others’ lives and well-being without a second thought. Because of this she’s actually died doing stunts many times, and no longer fears death. She’s very cool, but she looks down on people who aren’t (including Solemn). Because in a lot of ways she doesn’t care what harm she causes, she lives on Nemesis. She also worked as a low-level security guard at a networking security firm— the one that’s a front for KAPE’s weapons and their research into taking down the seraphs. And she doesn’t know about those details. Now, Jessi hates Nemesis a lot. When the seraphs track the strange weapons back to the firm, they discover that any time they approach it, the seraphs get so disoriented that they have to leave (due to the very tool that will be beefed up to take down the seraphs later). And their scanners are being stopped by the building’s walls. Furthermore, the seraphs don’t want to tip them off to the investigation, else they could move all the data. So the seraphs make a deal with Jessi as a former employee, that if she at least tries to infiltrate and place a scanner inside so they can gather data, they’ll let her try a year on Eleos, even though they believe she’s not ready. And during that time, she’ll also be mentored by Lu. Things go bad during the infiltration, and long story short, the seraphs use one of the stolen heliapods inside the complex that Solemn hides in to transform Solemn into a seraph so they can save their new family. Solemn becomes a seraph— same child Solemn, but now with seraph powers— in Chapter 5 of 20.
There are about a billion Iota androids. Our Iota is wise, funny, and cool. He’s Lu’s home-helper, and becomes a second caretaker to Solemn as well as their best friend. Iotas follow the Laws of Robots, so he can’t harm anyone nor assist in harming anyone. Because of this, later, when the villains’s fighter ships are trying to shoot down Solemn’s family with underdeveloped weapons (this is Heleia after all), they are unable to hit them because Iota is piloting the family’s ship and using his super-calculations to weave between ships and canons expertly. Stuff like that. Iota and Solemn have some really cool and touching moments, but I won’t spoil them in this post (maybe in another).
Tony is Lu’s husband and he’s a smart, compassionate, adorkable spaceship engineer who lives on the utopian planet Themis, where all his ambitions and dreams come true. He raised Lu’s and his son Daniel after both Tony and Daniel died a few months from each other on Earth. He’s got great dad energy, and he spends a good amount of time assisting in the plot and being a fun character.
There are smaller, supporting-role family members too.
Keep asking questions whenever you’re curious to know more! ♥
Also also, I got distracted, but I hope you’re doing well 💙