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From 2017: The Author's Story of the Story: Jovienne

Tell us about writing Jovienne.

My son, who is about to graduate, was still crawling when I wrote the short story, Jovienne. 

Yes, Jovienne came into being years before Persephone Alcmedi did. I recall that I cried over the ending scene where she gets her wings. After I typed 'the end,' her character continued to speak to me. There was more. Her story was not finished. It took me a while to realize that getting her wings was just beginning. I chipped away at that chrysalis, and a story of much broader scope began to emerge.

I’ve revisited her world several times over the years, gently modifying or viciously altering it. 

Getting this tale where it needed to be proved to be a dance of two steps forward and three steps back…much the same as my journey as a writer. But as relentless as Jovienne, I kept pushing onward. As violent as she with her swords, I wielded my highlight and delete skills to cut and slice and sever. 

What was the hardest part to write?

The crucial first act scene, the test, where she must fight to survive. The personal stakes couldn’t be higher: losing means being taken to hell by a demon. In crafting it, I did not approach the scene as I usually would a fight scene. Typically, I’d decide what skills she needed to show and how far to push and build the scene around those escalations. But with this one, a different tactic was used. I tried to figure out how to kill her. I threw the worst I could at her, based on the skills of the demon she faced. And, trigger warning: it’s a near-rape scene. 

Why? Why that?

I realize that women in fiction, be it novels, stage or scree, are often subjected to this heinous type of attack. It's usually gratuitous, existing only for macabre reasons. But in this story, it is the ultimate turning point in her life. 

Since I’d already established that upon coming into this world, demon’s need energy which they derive from death or sex, it was logical that this creature of evil would intends to gain from both. 

So how to make it worse than simply putting Jovienne in a situation where a demon will make the ultimate assault? 

I’d also already established a.) that some demons could shape-shift, b.) pull memories from the mind of a human, and c.) that her relationship with her deceased father was horrible. 

Making the demon combine these as its means to defeat her seemed obvious. 

Not to give too much away, she gives up for a moment, succumbing to fact that she cannot physically escape her fate. But Jovienne has a power that isn't physical, one she hasn't accessed in a over decade. Only the overwhelming desperation of this moment could push her to remember the thing she had good reason to put out of her mind. It certainly doesn't glorify the crime, but being in her point of view allows me to give key insight to her character. Even this, this attack of such despicable means, cannot truly break her.

What is the one thing Jovienne does that you think is the most bad-ass?

Jovienne is imperfect. Born into an abusive home, orphaned by a car accident and afterward raised in poverty and near solitude, her life has been spent in constant training. She isn’t a valedictorian from an affluent home. She doesn’t have all her shit together. She’s forced to become God’s cannon fodder, meant for the front line of His war against demons. But training for combat isn’t combat, and without experience in facing an actual enemy, she makes mistakes she will have to live with. But in spite of the doubts that surface after failures, the sometimes overwhelming feelings one has during and after tense events, and the addition of simply being a teenager, Jovienne refuses to let uncertainty immobilize her outwardly. So, to me, the most bad ass thing she does is to keep going and keep trusting herself to do the right thing, even after having to face the fact that her own moral compass.

What is your favorite thing about Jovienne?

There is so much I adore about Jovienne. If I gave that character any true part of me, it was recognition of a goal and the relentless pursuit of it, even if the path to it is hidden. 

She’s brave, but she is young and inexperienced -- which may make her seem incautious. She will act as she deems necessary in the moment, but afterward she thinks about the choices she made ‘in the heat of the moment.’ If introspection proves her decision was lacking or flat out wrong, she’s able to accept and acknowledge the flaw. Doubt and confusion may fill her mind, but it does not ultimately immobilize her. She keeps fighting toward her goal. 

*** IF YOU HAVEN'T FINISHED BOOK 3, I suggest you wait and come back when you're done. It's not exactly spoilery, but it hints at things wrapped up elsewhere in the actualy book in a different way. ***

CUT SCENE, CH 69 BOOK 3/MARTYR -

        Behind them, the elevator doors opened. Enoch’s hologram blended into the light as one of the Senegorin stepped out and cleared his throat. “Yes?” he called in Metaraon’s many voices. 

        “Someone named Sa’makum wishes to see you.” 

        “Send him in.”

        The Senegorin left. Soon, Samedi arrived.

        “Welcome,” Enoch said, using his own voice now that they were alone again. “I thought it would take longer for you to feel secure in coming here.”

        “Me, too,” Samedi said. 

        “Come. Let us sit,” Enoch said.

        “Thank you, but I’m not staying,” Samedi said. “I have a nice beach spot picked out, remember? If the world ends, that’s where I’ll be. If it doesn’t, I’ll still be there a few days from now.”

        “Then why have you come? Is this farewell?”

        Samedi shook his head. “I hope not.” He nodded politely to Enoch. “I do hope this works.” His gaze shifted to Ereš. “I’ve just come from Earth.”

        “How is Jovienne?”

        “Resting. But the house that group is in, it’s…haunted.”

        “Haunted?” Ereš asked.

        “One of yours. A manifested kigallatu. Took me a while to figure out what he is. He died years back and has been running around ever since, just living his best fuckin’ afterlife as a ghost.” 

        “How? If they get cremated, I sense them and bring them to Eršetu. If not…they’re olaim.”

        “He’s cremated all right. His ashes are kept in the house. And his ghost is lucid as shit.”

        “That can’t be. I would have felt him.”

        Samedi grinned wide. “That’s why I came here before going to my end of the world spot.”

        “Well, tell us!” Enoch was curious, too.

        “His ashes are kept in four pristine canopic jars in a case in his former study, as dictated by his will, according to his grandchild. They’re clearly a matched set, though the plate on the case says they were taken from four different tombs.”

        “Tombs where?”

        Enoch was surprised by the tension he heard in her voice.

        “They’re marked as Agartha, Asgard, Atlantis, and Avalon.”

        “Fuck,” Ereš said.

        Samedi smile turned into a smirk. “That’s what I said.”