I’ve recounted the story behind the creation of my Femme Fatale universe countless times and in several places on this website, but today I thought it would be fun to dip into a little Behind The Scenes regarding the creation of one of the main characters from that series.
The character of Samantha Jayne, the fire manipulator known as…
So, let’s go back to the beginning shall we?
The character of Kasai was originally called Pyra. She was based on the character of a player I used to play with a long time ago, but lost touch with over the years. Where the Femme Fatales series has been a labour of collaborative love (many of the satellite characters are based on the original CoH creations of friends, used with their permission) I’d tried to find contact details for Pyra‘s player, but alas failed.
Now, the original Pyra looked like this…
When I got back into the game, I took a stab at recreating her look, and this is what I got. similar in spirit but with a couple of amendments.
I knew that Pyra was a key player in The Scorched Sky, but without getting the blessing of the player, I was really reluctant to go with this vision of her in the book. As I also knew that she would be one of the two heroes featured on the cover of The Scorched Sky, I felt I needed a redesign. So, she got a makeover.
I wanted to make her stand out from the other characters, so I pushed for a sort of a rock-goth inspired look. Black leather, tattooed arms and midriff, but still with the black hair and a propensity for showing a little skin. More specifically I needed her to be a counter image to Elena (aka Shield Maiden the other cover girl), who was a pretty straight-laced Latino redhead.
For reference, here’s the original City of Heroes Shield Maiden alongside her artistically painted counterpart.
She looks great. I love what my artist, Marlena Mozgawa (@LenamoArt on Instagram) did with her. Elena was based on a reference picture I sent over to Marlena of an actress called Alice Braga that my editor, Nikki, suggested.
The important thing was that I didn’t want Elena to look exactly like her, I just needed to give Marlena a general basis for the look I was searching for. Mission accomplished. (By the way, if you’ve seen the pictures on the website of Gayle and Reflex/Fordith, they were inspired by Melanie Scrofano and Gemma Chan respectively! Just FYI)
It left me internet searching for the perfect inspiration for Pyra. After a while it occurred to me…I knew of someone who had just the right look. An alt model by the name of Samii Jinx.
Now, I didn’t know Samii well, only really in passing. We’d been introduced many moons ago when my wife and I were running an obstacle course race called the Zombie Evacuation event. While things didn’t totally go as planned on that front, it had at least given me an cursory awareness of Samii and her work and I followed her on Facebook and Instagram and admired her work. Especially the cosplay stuff. I’m a sucker for cosplay.
Anyway, she’s phenomenal. Plus, she always seemed like a really nice person.
So, summoning up my courage, I decided to approach her to ask permission to use her likeness as an inspiration for Pyra. As with Shield Maiden, I didn’t want to use her exactly, but needed a point of reference for Marlena to understand the kind of look I was searching for.
(Sidenote: Remind me one day to do a BTS on the pain Nikki and I had finding just the right picture of a door as a reference for her cover for Acts of Closure. And then how we repeated that pain with the table for Acts of Confession, and the theatre for Acts of Commitment! ARGH!)
Anyway, I needn’t have worried, because it turns out Samii is a really really nice person!
Not only did she give me her blessing to use her photo to send to Marlena as a reference, she also sent me a bunch more photos to forward on. And after a flurry of discussion, she also said she’d be really excited and honoured if the character wasn’t just inspired by her, but actually was her.
I mean…what an offer! You honestly can’t say no to that can you?
She said she didn’t want anything in return, but I really wanted to reciprocate her kindness somehow. I thought it only fair to let her rename the character and give input on the backstory. At this point the character was in early development, so it was all up in the air and subject to change. Samii had some brilliant ideas and helped me flesh out the character who we renamed Kasai, which I believe is Japanese for Fire. Samii’s suggestion. Perfection.
Now, out of the pictures she sent over – see below – one in particular drew my attention…
Credit to photographers, left to right: JPR Photography, Robert Mann Photography, Chris Martin.
The middle one. If you don’t recognise the source, it’s from a Cosplay set that Samii did as Yennefer from The Witcher. And there were more to that set, including one that formed the basis for the art that Marlena created.
Here’s the original photo and Marlena’s art side by side.
Photograph by JPR Photography, art by Marlena Mozgawa.
The cosplay shot of Samii leant itself perfectly as a basis for the cover pose. Here’s the cover to The Scorched Sky (available here!) so you can see the final result.
The cover combines Kasai and Shield Maiden in front of a backdrop of a city (in the book it’s New Chicago) and the tattered edges of ‘The Breach‘, which is the source of the primary threat in the novel. Shield Maiden has cast her forcefield bubble around the two of them for protection.
Each of the covers for the series is going to have a pair of heroes, so Marlena is having a busy old time painting them all. The next novel, The Broken Ground, will have previously painted images of Knightingale and Reflex on the cover, then the book after that will feature Rogue and a new character not yet introduced called Starstorm. The long term aim is to have a huge group shot with them all stood together. So far we have a quartet.
Or, more accurately, a quintet.
Because, I couldn’t leave it there.
Samii loves animals. Particularly cats, of which she has many. One in particular she often refers to as her soulmate and he is quite the kitty. He’s a snow white Maine Coone named Odin. He’s a big one-eyed bundle of fluff, and Samii often posts piccies of him on her social media. So, as a thank you, I commissioned Marlena to add Odin to the artwork and decided that he needed to be written into the book continuity.
And so he will be.
Next up on my writing docket (as I write this in March 2024) is the next Femme Fatale Novella, and this one will focus on Kasai and introduce her fluffy soulmate. Odin will be a character in his own right. He’ll even have superpowers of his own!
I’d set the template for the novella covers with the previous Knightingale book, but for the Kasai novella the cover art will feature both Samii and her faithful cat companion.
So there you have it. A behind the scenes peek at how Samii got tangled up in this crazy world of the Femme Fatales.
I’m hoping for a simultaneous release of Kasai and The Broken Ground later this year, probably September/October if I’m lucky. I’d also been chatting to Samii about doing something special for the launch, so stay tuned for that.
In the meantime go give Samii a follow on Instagram at: @Hai_Jinxx
She has all kinds of endeavours in the offing, from her modelling to twitch streams, to cosplaying at Comic-con’s all over the country. She’s a very busy bunny!
Till next time.
Love & Books
