Marianne Arcadia

Marianne Arcadia from Elydian Dawn (2018-or-19). Character Post 5

Marianne is someone I've known a long time- since 1999. At that time, her surname was Ackerman, and she was a heroic figure from a long time in the past. Her inspiring story was something that motivated a young man to undertake a perilous adventure. For a long time, that was Marianne; a legend. Years later, I took up the young man's story again, and realised that before I could tell it properly I had to deal with Marianne. Who was this seventeen-year-old heroine of disaster? What was she like?
Marianne was born in 2254; the first child of Anya and Marcus Arcadia. Arcadia wasn't their true family name, but one they'd assumed since breaking all ties with their old home on Terra. (That's why I changed the surname... Arcadia seemed a good choice in the circumstances.) Marianne was conceived either on Earth or maybe in space on the great colony ship Elysian Dawn. This was an accident, as no one knew the effect of the FeTtl drive on a developing foetus. She was born apparently normal, and grew up in the ship along with her two younger brothers. Knowing very little of Terra, and understanding she wouldn't live long enough to land on the Elysians' future homeworld, Marianne was a happy and practical girl, whose thirst for knowledge and the history her parents wouldn't tell her was satisfied, in part, by the books of myths and legends she found in the storage. At seventeen, she was engaged to Jeremiah Rain, a young man in his twenties. She felt herself ready for marriage, but her mother ruled she must first be mature and to Marianne's chagrin she was still growing a little taller. Jeremiah called her his practical nymph and that just about summed her up. Loner Edsen Balm was devoted to her, though he knew that by the time he was of marriageable age Marianne would be married already.
That was the situation when disaster overtook Elysian Dawn. Within a few days, Marianne's bright future was gone, along with almost everything else. Once she was resigned to her survival, she found herself in a position she'd never wanted and felt she couldn't manage. How do you go on when life has slammed you to the wall? In Marianne's opinion, you don't. Only... there were others to consider, and decisions to make. Worse, there were the consequences of those decisions.
Marianne, I discovered, was indeed a heroine. She was a long way from the remote take-charge young woman I first envisaged, but she felt real and I grew very fond of her.
I'm hoping others who read her story will feel the same way when Elydian Dawn is published. If you'd like to know more, go to THIS LINK. There is no cover yet, so the girl in the picture is just a representation of the way she might have looked.


ABOUT THE BLOG

Sally is Sally Odgers; author, manuscript assessor, editor, anthologist and reader. She runs http://www.affordablemanuscriptassessments.com and Prints Charming Books. (Sally is me, by the way, and I am lots of other things too, but these are the relevant ones for now.)

The goal for 2017 was to write a post a day profiling the background behind one of my books; how it came to be written, what it's about, and any things of note that happened along the way. If you're an author, an aspiring author, a reader or just someone who enjoys windows into worlds, you might find this fun. The books are not in any special order, but will be assigned approximate dates, and pictures, where they exist. 2017 is now behind us, but I ran out of year before running out of books. As of February 18th 2018 I STILL haven't run out of books, but many of those still to come are MIA by which I mean I don't have copies and remember little about them. There are more new books to come, and I'll certainly showcase those, but in between times, I'm profiling some of my characters, just for a change. Thank you so much to everyone who's come along on this journey so far!