I’m supposed to be posting here twice a week. That’s my goal (as of mid-May, anyway). However…I frequently occasionally find it difficult to come up with something to write about.  That makes posting quite a bit more difficult, as you can imagine.  Sadly, I don’t have hours to spend in dreamy contemplation of what to blog about.  In fact, I’m lucky to have 15 minutes to both come up with a topic and compose the blog.  I recently saw a suggestion to blog about your characters and story.   While that would seem blindingly obvious…it never occurred to me before, except to mention them in passing.  But now I’m going to remedy this deplorable lack on my part.  So…

I’d like you to meet Acacia Fauve, or Cacia.  Cacia doesn’t think she’s anything special.  Average height, average build, with brown eyes.  Her only remarkable physical feature–in her mind, anyway–is her dark red hair. She doesn’t like attention, so she keeps it braided all the time. She’s mostly shy, unobtrusive, and trusts very few people. Very, very few. Like, two…She works as an assistant to the “customs” agent in Thule. She is terrified of mages (more on that in a sec). Cacia sees ghosts. All day, everyday. Her best friend is a cat named Damali who also sees ghosts–at least Cacia thinks he does. He’s not a talking cat or anything, just a regular old cat, so he can’t exactly tell her.

Cacia lives in a tiny cubbyhole not far from the shop. She has one other friend besides Damali, a servant named Ben who works in the castle. She doesn’t see him much, but he’s still her friend. She’s about twenty now, but when she was ten, she saw her entire family killed. They were jungle farmers, back when it was safe to live in the jungle, but the Wakaun came out of nowhere one day and killed her family. Cacia isn’t sure how she survived–or why–but the arrival of the Wakaun drove her into the city.

She doesn’t talk about her ability. To anyone. Not even Ben. The yearly feast of Zo–where the priests do a bloodletting on everyone so they can see the ghosts of their ancestors in an offering of power to Anik (a god)–is a nightmare for her. She avoids it, because the bloodletting only makes her power worse, and she doesn’t need any more crazy in her life. She has quite enough, thank you. And speaking of crazy…Cacia avoids the mages at all costs. She thinks they’re crazy, and she knows they’re greedy for power, so she stays far, far away, and is very careful to keep a tight grip on both her power and her emotions. There’s safety in control and calmness, and she likes it that way. At least until she meets Breck and Casanova…