Laskenay Heathdon (LAS-kuh-nay) has always been one of my favorite characters in my trilogy.

She is one of four leaguesmen (members of the organized resistance against sorcerer-dictator Zalski Forzythe) who come from the noble class. Of those four, she’s the only woman.

I imagine her as exceedingly elegant, even masquerading as she must in commoners’ garb. She’s tall, around six feet, with long black hair, piercing ice-blue eyes, and pale skin.

She is one of the two heads of the Crimson League, and she brings a feminine insight and perspective to help balance her counterpart, Menikas (MEN-uh-kass), one of the noblemen. His strengths and abilities are definitely masculine, and they complement each other well (though there’s nothing romantic between them).

ORIGINS

I have always connected Laskenay with water/ice, ever since the dream I had my freshman year of college that put the idea into my head for the story that became The Crimson League: The Fight for Hope.

My original thought was to include magic in the story by giving certain characters magic powers associated with the elements. Laskenay was one of these characters. Her element was to be water, and I wanted to give her blue hair.

All of that, I realized about ten pages in, was a horrible idea–at least in my hands. I could make nothing interesting of it. I stopped writing and wrote a different first novel about something else entirely. (It’s awful, hence unpublished, but it taught me how to write.)

Then, I literally woke up one morning the summer before senior year knowing how to fix the story idea that had been lingering since that dream three years before. I started writing that day.

LADY OF SORROWS

Laskenay is my lady of sorrows. Some of the novel’s best twists and revelations are related to her specifically. She’s influenced partly by Fantine in Les Miserables, my favorite novel, which I still find amusing because Fantine is actually one of my least favorite characters in Les Miserables. But writing is like that!

Laskenay becomes a mentor of sorts and a big sister figure to protagonist Kora. While Kora’s personality and strengths are more heated, Laskenay is (unsurprising, considering all I said above) icy in her way.

She perseveres in a kind of numbness in many respects. She endures out of pure determination to see justice done, if not revenge. She’s incredibly private, preferring to suffer in silence as much as possible to the degree that she suffers, and she’s very much an introvert.

Both her strengths and her weaknesses are very feminine. Her contributions to the resistance movement are feminine, and when she fights, it’s generally not like a man. Laskenay knows who she is, and she is mostly self-assured in that. As a woman fighting in a civil war, Laskenay doesn’t try to be a man. She’s wise enough to know she’s not a traditional soldier, and any chance she has to succeed or survive lies in adopting other tactics.

Mark your calendars for release on June 15! You reach more character spotlights (Sedder and Lanokas) or check out an except here as well.

• Meet Verony TODAY! Find redemption with her and the Crimson League
• She took part in a sorcerer’s coup, then changed her mind.
• COVER REVEAL!!!
• My characters are kind of like my kids
• We are go! With magic of a different kind in this one.