Launch day is in 2 days, so today I’m spotlighting protagonist Kora Porteg!

I could easily have titled this post “Kora the Courageous,” and it would have fit. The alliteration would have been nice, too.

Kora’s seventeen when The Crimson League: The Fight for Hope starts. She’s a peasant girl doing her best to help her family persevere in the midst of real societal upheaval. (Sorcerer-noble Zalski Forzythe, you see, has killed the royal family and taken over the kingdom of Herezoth.)

Kora demonstrates very real courage as events outside her control launch her into her destiny, on a path she never expected and never would have chosen: fighting alongside the resistance movement, The Crimson League.

Kora demonstrates a feminine form of courage, I think, supporting others in a maternal kind of way in their battles to hope and persevere in an increasingly desperate magical civil war. She’s also courageous in a traditional sense.

She demonstrates real moral courage in refusing to betray what she knows to be right, at great cost to herself.

But more than that, what sticks out to me when I think of Kora is resilience. At least, that’s her quality that most inspires me.

Kora’s not a traditional soldier. She never could be that, and she doesn’t try to be something she’s not. And yet, with every loss or setback, she never gives up. She adjusts her vision and expectations and takes whatever next step is possible to take.

I spent 9 months in religious formation as a postulant with a community of nuns in 2019. When I left the monastery and returned to revising a second edition of what was originally just The Crimson League a decade ago, more than almost anything else in my entire trilogy, Kora’s resilience resonated with me.

You see, I was in a spot where I needed to demonstrate resilience myself. (I wrote about that here). I always connected more with some other characters, or was more like other characters, but while I was finding my footing in a new life, among my collapsed dreams and expectations for the future, Kora’s real ability to adjust, adapt, and advance were blaring sirens calling me to do the same.

From the beginning to the end of her story, Kora is amazingly resilient. She perseveres when time and again, what she thought would be her life and her place in the world she knows shifts. She taught me to do the same, and for that, I will always love her.

Mark your calenders for June 15! Read an excerpt, or a review, and spread the word!

• 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.