Character Sketches — Hindsight

Eleven months ago, I published Hindsight, and now I've finally got some character sketches ready to share. So if you loved the story, or if you're just discovering the Dragon's Fire Series and want to know more, pull up a chair and learn some new things about four major characters from the final book in the series. We're starting with the main character, Holly, and a supporting character, Laoise, this month.

Holly O’Hannon

“Sometimes, thinking about what will be is even more painful than remembering what was…”

Birthdate: 1996
Age at the time of this story: 24
Physical Characteristics: 5’6”; 127 lbs; chestnut hair; blue eyes
Titles: None

Holly craves creative expression. Dramatic and musical arts influence her throughout her youth and give her much to enjoy as she participates in theater, dance, and gymnastics. She hones her gifts in college, becoming a skilled actress with tremendous potential for playing leading roles. But just as she prepares to spread her wings, her mother receives a terminal diagnosis.

Holly’s sunshiny world turns dark, and she takes what she views as a dead-end job to stay near her mother. Friendships cool when palliative care fills every spare moment. A relationship sours and fails, and Holly’s outlook on life chills and grows cynical.

Her mother’s death leaves Holly alone with few friends, no romantic partner, and no promising career prospects. She struggles with feelings of inadequacy: inadequate to keep her mother alive, inadequate to maintain her boyfriend’s interest, inadequate to win the stage roles for which she yearns. Everything she knew has crashed; nothing will ever be the same.

Now trapped in a never-ending cycle of historical reenactments at the castle, grieving both her mother and her lover, Holly seeks a way off the monotonous treadmill her life has become. When a strange mask offers a bizarre view into other worlds, Holly’s curiosity outweighs sense. Ensnared in a foreign but familiar environment, she must navigate her destiny, masking her weaknesses to fit into a world where she doesn’t belong.

“Playing skits and leading tours of a history museum in character as former royalty got old fast. I’ve spent four years performing recycled, never-ending historical reenactments opposite actors of varying skill levels. I trained for better than this. 

“Just when my mother passed, Caledon closed its borders because of Covid. Finally free to pursue my ambitions, I was trapped at the castle again, along with the grief and the memories—how I longed to escape!

“Then I found the mask. Creepy stuff started happening: sea monsters, dead bodies, ghosts, voices, visions. I’m convinced I’m going mad. Something is very weird about all this…”

Laoise (LEE sha)

“The gods sent me to the darkest night. There was a bonfire, and Cythraul…”

Birthdate: 334
Age at the time of this story: 24
Physical Characteristics: 5’4”; 120 lbs; blond hair; blue eyes
Titles: None

Laoise thrives on the comforts of home, even when poverty makes home less than comfortable. Stepping onto a ship to flee her homeland is so out of her comfort zone, she’d have refused to do it if staying had not guaranteed a worse fate. Defying the wishes of her closest relatives, Laoise becomes indebted to the nobleman who financed the journey and to another older, wealthier passenger. Despite their protection, she battles loneliness and vulnerability as a vast sea separates her from the world she knew.

She finds her niche on board by seeing needs and filling them; always eager to help, always kind, always putting others first. Laoise’s constant people-pleasing masks her discomfort with her circumstances and her feelings of inadequacy and fear as she faces an unknown future on an untamed shore.

“I’ve never had such an odd friend as the pretty stranger I met in the flooded holds. From her immodest dress to her bare feet on the rough boards, she doesn’t fit. But I like her, despite that. She needs a friend; no one else here wants anything to do with her.

“She needed my help; she lacked basic personal items she should have brought from home, and she doesn’t understand how to complete simple tasks my mother taught me when I was a child. I suspect she’s a pauper and has never had the things I’ve given her. I had to teach her how to fasten her shoes! How she scraped up three coppers for passage on this vessel, I’ll never fathom.

“She is a constant source of interest and amusement for me. She suggested I talk to Lord Zandor when I mentioned I thought him handsome. He might throw me overboard for taking such a liberty! I know my station, and I know better than to speak to him before I am spoken to. Even then, he prefers a curtsey and obedience to words.

“I intend to marry soon. I came to this Caledon for a future brighter than the one I left behind. A land cannot be settled without families, and Brody would not have paid my passage had he not intended to exact the sum from me in the only way I can afford. My new friend scoffs at the very idea of marriage, yet why should she feel as vulnerable as I? She summoned the Cythraul to guard her. If I could command dragons, what need would I have of a man?”

What need, indeed? Next month, I'll share Tadhg's and Logan's perspectives.
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