I think about my characters a lot. What are their lives like after the story ends? What would their lives have been like if only they'd made a different choice? Did this one really have to die, or could the story have worked some other way? But what if your characters could think about you? What would they think about a creator who would be so heartless and arbitrary as to create them simply for her own amusement?

I tend to put my characters through a lot of trouble and pain. That's just what good fiction requires, because nobody wants to read a story where there's no conflict and nothing happens. Still, I don't think I've hurt any of my characters as badly as I hurt Jess. The characters in my first novel had a lot of trouble, but they were also princesses and heroes, and had a lot of help. Jess was a slave and the daughter of a slave, born in a brothel and forced to sell her body to pay off an ancestral debt that she had no hope of clearing. All of which was just the start of her troubles. What's worse is I don't think I'm nearly good enough as a writer to do her story justice. Still, I'm quite fond of my little Jessie and I kind of feel bad for doing so many horrible things to her. So I commissioned this little picture because I wanted to give her a moment of comfort and sympathy.

Art belongs to JillianCorvus: http://www.furaffinity.net/user/jilliancorvus

Jessamine Bryar and Niamh Lohan belong to me.