The next several months will bring author commentaries on all six stories contained within the Tales from Portents collection. My hope is to offer insight into the decisions made in putting the project together and the challenges therein. It’s also fun to point out the little Easter eggs throughout. (I love that crap.) So, SPOILER WARNING is in effect for the duration.

Soriya in the spotlight

View from Above offered a very unique situation when coming up with the plot, something I hadn’t come across before when putting together a Greystone tale. A story solely from Soriya’s perspective. When I originally thought of the series, Soriya was the lead. There was no story without her and to an extent that remains true.

When I received the edited version of Signs of Portents from my editor, Kristen Hamilton of Kristen Corrects Inc. so many moons ago, she also wrote up the back cover description. When I read it I flinched, I balked, I couldn’t believe it. The whole thing centered around Loren.

And she was absolutely right in that assessment.

Loren was our window into the city of Portents and Soriya’s world. Unlike something like Dresden Files where we follow Harry Dresden and his view of the world including his relationship with the police and Detective Murphy – a relationship I was very cognizant of when developing the Greystone series – we only learn about the city because Loren has to learn about it at that moment.

Sure, there are chapters from Soriya’s perspective and her own arc in Signs, but the driving force of the initial novel was Loren.

Tales offered a change. And I took it and ran with it.

How best to show Soriya in a solo setting?

This was my first question. How did she fit in the world without her connection to Loren, her seemingly only normal connection to the city of Portents? How did she go about investigating on her own?

Soriya, at the time of View from Above, is 20. She’s barely out of teenager mode or, if she’s like I was, still caught firmly in its clutches. Emotional. Quick to anger.

Pretty much angry in general. And that little tidbit was my starting point with her for this story.

Once I had her anger, her need to punch, kick and maim whatever the hell was behind the latest insanity in Portents, I had my starting point.

And I had Soriya Greystone down.

Playing her off Vlad

Soriya doesn’t play well with others. And when she does they typically come from a place of authority. Mentor. Loren. Ruiz.

Vlad offered a change. He’s around her age. He carries a burden he can’t really share with people, outside the Corwell family. They both share that connection.

His presence also allowed me to graze the subject of romance with Soriya. It hasn’t really come up with readers so far but I always worry about falling into the Moonlighting (dated reference!) or Friends (somewhat better, old man) dynamic of “will they, won’t they” when it comes to a male and female led narrative.

I get it. Romantic tension is a great tool, one seen hundreds of thousands of times before. I made Loren slightly older than early drafts to escape some of that thinking. Soriya’s encounters with Vlad and even Russell Kerr in The Consultant to some degree, allowed me to somewhat wipe that notion away completely.

Will it stay that way? Will there ever be a time when Soriya and Loren can evolve to that next level? Have they even considered it?

I don’t know. I’d like to say no way, no how, but I can’t say definitively one way or another how the entire series plays out.

Not yet.

Easter Egg

Soriya’s need to punch something, that burning desire at the start of View from Above, actually came from the first draft of The Medusa Coin. Back in my heyday, dreaming of using Greystone as a potential comic book franchise I outlined the four issue mini-series that became the spine of the third novel of the series.

In it, I soon realized there was little action in the first quarter and that stood out to me as something Soriya would not stand for. Ever.

I dropped the idea when putting together the latest iteration of The Medusa Coin as it didn’t fit with her arc through the novel. But I was happy it circled around to this tale and fit so wonderfully with the approach to her character here.

Next time:

Insight into the Kitsune and her role in the narrative for View from Above.

Thanks for reading.