Meet Maribel, A Telepathic Rebel with a Cause

Thanks to Britt Ringel, creator the military sci-fi series This Corner of the Universe, for inviting me to participate in the Characters Blog Tour. Britt has three titles out in his TCOTU series, with a fourth planned for late 2014.

For this post, I’m going to talk about Maribel, the main character of my sci-fi/fantasy series The Dream Guild Chronicles.

The name of your main character you wish to highlight. Describe how you came up with their idea.

Maribel is the main character in my book Irradiance, the first book in my Dream Guild Chronicles series. She is a scientist, specifically an astronomer with the Habitable Planets department on the world of Sindra. Her eyes also grace the cover of the book, which you can see to the right.

What’s with the crystal on her forehead? Well, I’m glad you asked. Sindra is a highly-developed world of native telepaths. A mineral called littrium is native to the world and has been found to enhance their inherent psionic abilities. On Sindra, at the age of thirteen, children are Joined, implanted with a crystal that is wired to their brain, and become Citizens of the networked Community.

Maribel’s name and the idea for a community of telepaths came to me first, before the rest of the story. True confession time: I get a little jolt a dopamine every time someone emails me to tell me they like the names of my characters. I even got a poor review that had nothing nice to say about the book EXCEPT that they liked the names of the characters.

Where and when is the setting for the story.

Think of the Dream Guild Chronicles as my Star Wars-Episode One. When I was between jobs in 2013, I wrote a stand-alone novel called, The Dream Guild. The premise of the book is that Earth has a sister planet, connected by dreams, and guarded by an organization called the Dream Guild. This was before I started writing full-time and The Dream Guild was just a story I wanted to get out of my system.

That all changed when I decided to go pro on the writing thing. I realized if I wanted to make this idea into a series, I needed to start at the beginning, i.e. how these parallel worlds got established in the first place.

And so the idea for Sindra was born, the setting for Irradiance. In Sight, Book Two of the Chronicles, we stay with Maribel but travel across the galaxy as she tries to find a new home for, Sariah, one of her children.

In Sacrifice, Book Three, planned for release in October, her brother Gideon establishes himself on pre-Columbian Earth, again with the help of his mother, Maribel.

Tell what things you want people to know about her.

Peace and prosperity reign in Sindra. Everything is controlled and regulated by the Community, including the production of genetically engineered children. Human contact, emotions, even speaking, are discouraged, but a few intrepid Sindrans start to explore beyond the bounds of the Community…

Maribel is a prototypical good girl. She obeys the rules of her society because that’s what is expected of her. But Maribel is also a scientist, and she follows facts where they lead her. The problem starts when the facts and the societal message start to diverge. It was important to me that Maribel be a strong female character who believes in her Community, but comes to a slow realization that she has been deceived and needs to take action.

What is her main conflict and how does she develop from dealing with it.

As a scientist in the Habitable Planets division, Maribel has access to a new kind of telescope which she uses to analyze their own sun. She makes a shocking discovery: their sun is failing. What’s more, this has been going on for centuries and has been covered up by the government. Suddenly, all the climate change issues on Sindra makes sense, and when she runs predictive models, she realizes they have only a few years left.

Maribel blows the whistle…and the government comes after her and her children.

Title of your work and how to purchase it.

Irradiance and Sight, the first two books of the  Dream Guild Chronicles series are available on Amazon.

In a few weeks, I'll be releasing Book Three, entitled Sacrifice. This is the first time I've shown the new cover to anyone, so enjoy!

In the meantime, you can signup for my newsletter to get notified of the new release (and get some free stuff as well).

Now I'd like you to meet a pair of very talented writers.

Ceri London is the author of the fabulous military sci-fi/fantasy tale, Rogue Genesis. You won’t find a better SFF tagline in the biz: “Slipping on the edge of space-time.” I reviewed her book a few months ago. Definitely worth a read!

Ashley R. Carlson, is the author of the fantasy novel, Halcyon, Book One of the Charismata series, planned for release in late 2014.

David Bruns is the creator of the sci-fi series  The Dream Guild Chronicles, and one half of the Two Navy Guys and a Novel blog series about co-writing the military thriller, Weapons of Mass Deception. Check out his website for a free sample of his work.