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Another Girl Lost
I’ve lost track how long it’s been since I last heard from Katalina Wimple. For those who don’t know her, you should. She’s pretty darn amazing. She came to me one day out of nowhere because she had a story that needed to be told. For some reason she decided I was the one to tell her story and she wouldn’t take no for an answer.
Imagine, if you will, a petite woman that barely tops 5 feet tall with the training of a police officer giving you that look. The look that makes you suspect it’s a good thing you don’t know what she’s going to do you if you don’t do what she wants. I’m a reasonably big guy and Katalina is not, but there was never any question about what I was going to do.
In fact, she made me do something I’d never done before – I wrote back to back books about her without writing something else in between. She was demanding, to say the least, and is to this day my all time favorite character I’ve ever written. Oh sure, I’ve had some great ones, but Katalina was special. So special I started to hate it when she made me write a new story about her. I didn’t want to experience what happened to her, because it always hurt. After the fifth Lost Girls book, Guardian, I believed that we were finally done. She could retire and enjoy some long deserved peace and the embrace of those who loved her.
For a few years it worked. In fact, it sort of still is working. But she let me know there’s somebody else I need to write about. It’s not her, but it’s somebody she met through her adopted daughter. Another special girl by the name of Amelia Foster. Or, as her customers call her, Bling.
Devoted readers of my stories might remember a character named Bling from a novel I wrote and submitted to the Shadowrun role playing game people. They liked it, but it didn’t mesh enough to be included in their official canon. They encouraged me to publish it as fan fiction though, so I did. A version of Bling was in it, but that wasn’t enough for her. So she told me to put her in something else that would let her keep her unique flair. She was always a Lost Girl, and now she’s found her way home.
Bling is my newest release and is the 6th book in the Lost Girl series. Amelia is a child of two worlds with a tendency to make bad choices. Her intentions are golden, but she doesn’t always have the patience or wisdom for the long term. She was orphaned by the government as a child and tossed into the foster system with her younger brother. For people like them the foster system is an ugly place. Dark Earthers are considered second hand citizens, at best, and Amelia’s strangely pointed ears made her more of a target than most. As soon as possible, Amelia took her brother and they ran away. They’ve bounced from homeless shelter to abandoned homes to dark alleys ever since.
This book picks up after Amelia and her brother have found a somewhat stable life in downtown Phoenix. He’s in 5th grade and she goes to school when she’s not too tired because she works late nights as an Amateur Entertainment Contractor. Hey, it’s good money and legal work, aside from her having to get fake certifications because of the status of her birth. Most of the customers are pigs, but it’s easy work.
Easy until her bad choices team up and decide to teach her a lesson. The odds are against her and she’s got a lot of hard lessons to learn if she’s going to keep her brother safe and keep herself alive.
Remember when I said Katy made me write back to back books about her? Well, I’m doing it again with Amelia. Bling 2.0 is halfway done, in fact. Yes, 2.0 is a weird name for a sequel, but in it Bling is definitely upgraded and reborn. A new version, if you will. Same girl with the same quirks and shortcomings, but she thinks she’s better outfitted to deal with them. Nothing could prepare her for what she’s going to face though.
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