PRIMARY CHARACTERS
Click on the pictures to get the full caption.
(Ages are as The Proviso opens. Spans August 2004 – January 2009.)
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Knox Hilliard: 36. Chouteau County prosecutor and UMKC law professor who can be rather…insane…at times. Murderer, blackmailer, and all-around asshole. Cousin to Giselle and Sebastian, “Dutch Uncle” to Eric and foster father to Vanessa.
Justice McKinley: 22. Law student, political blogger, constitutional scholar, and farmer-by-necessity who really doesn’t want to believe all those nasty rumors about that dreamy Professor Hilliard for whom she is determined to work, come hell or high water—and he does put her through hell.
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Giselle Cox: 35. PhD in literature whose bookstore burned and left her in deep debt. She is now struggling with law school and religiously enforced virginity—although not always in that order. She lives with Sebastian out of necessity and (sometimes) reluctantly assists Knox in his schemes.
Bryce Kenard: 38. Knox’s college roommate, tort lawyer extraordinaire, and widower whose family was killed when his house burned down. He’s having a severe crisis of faith, which he intends to end by getting Giselle into bed—and gets far more than he bargained for.
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Sebastian Taight: 38. Corporate restructurer and/or raider (depending on the situation) with an unusual night job. He’s led a life of debauchery and intellectual binging. He’s getting restless for the one thing he can’t seem to get: a woman who’ll dig past his pretty face and fat bank account to his soul.
Eilis Logan: 38. An embattled CEO with a lifetime of secrets and a strange connection to the war Knox and Sebastian are waging on the villain of the piece. Her only goal is to save her company and her employees, then find Ford, painter of nudes and profligate lover, to set her free from her past.
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(Ages are as Stay opens. Spans January 2009 – May 2011.)
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Vanessa Whittaker: 27. Model for Ford painting Wild, Wild West, cover girl chef of Maxim and Esquire, celebrity TV chef of Vittles: Gourmet Weeds and Roadkill. Despite success, fame, and two infamous, gorgeous, and exquisite lovers, Vanessa still can’t shake the memory of the teenage bad boy who made her little-girl heart flutter.
Eric Cipriani: 32. A reformed bad boy headed into politics via an impeccable education from a religious university and a talent for management. He has a made-for-politics fiancée, a healthy side business, and the most powerful people in the midwest behind him—then he runs into all-grown-up Vanessa, the woman who made it all possible.
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Some time in the grown-up future…
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If you read Stay and you want to know what happened to Vachel Whittaker, here’s your chance. You can purchase this short story from Freya’s Bower, which is part of the Dreams & Desires Vol 4 anthology to benefit a battered women’s shelter.
One night. One man. One dress.
Regina Westlake sees nothing wrong with her clubbing lifestyle until the gorgeous guy cleaning her pool refuses to play her games. When he’s hired to be her arm candy for a formal event, he makes his disdain for her clear by re-dressing her in something far more appropriate than what she had worn to the party.
Shattered, she takes his contempt, his dress, the memory of his kiss—and rebuilds her life from the ground up. She never expects to see him again, but when she does…
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(Ages are as Magdalene opens. Spans Thanksgiving 2010 – Easter 2011.)
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Mitch Hollander: 44. PhD, metallurgical engineering; founder and CEO of Hollander Steelworks, headquartered in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. He is also a widowed Mormon bishop who served half an 18-month mission in Paris, France. He likes fast cars and ZZ Top.
Cassie St. James: 46. MBA; Vice President-Restructuring Division, Blackwood Securities. In a previous life, she was a high-dollar hooker. She is divorced, lives in Manhattan’s Upper East Side, has four adult children (all of whom live with her), engages in strategic revenge, and possesses a latent penchant for silliness.
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(The four-greats grandparents of Knox, Giselle, Sebastian, Morgan, Étienne, Victoria, et al Dunhams. Spans most of the American Revolutionary War.)
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Elliott Raxham, Earl Tavendish: Tried for and acquitted of high treason against the Crown in the aftermath of a covert operation gone wrong, for which Elliott was framed. He grows bitter and angry during his imprisonment and trial, and sets out to become the traitor he was wrongly accused of being, as pirate Captain Judas of the Silver Shilling. When he accidentally starts a tavern brawl, he comes up against the captain of the Thunderstorm…
The Honourable Miss Celia Bancroft: Blockade runner, bootlegger, and valuable part of the Continental Congress’s privateer fleet. All “Captain Fury” has on her mind is to help the United States win its independence and amass a fortune to retain her own independence. She doesn’t take kindly to being mistaken for a common tavern wench, and doesn’t care for the fact that the randy sailor who pulls her into his lap for a kiss isn’t hard on the eyes.
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(The granddaughter of Giselle and Bryce Kenard. Spans 15 years.)
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Delilah Kenard: At 13, her first crush is Bram Forrester, a 15-year-old full of fun and laughter and light. His kisses are sweet and innocent. At 15, her second crush is Devon Nishimura, a 17-year-old LDS boy, dark and sensual, whose kisses lead her places she knows she’s not supposed to go.
But fate intervenes in Delilah’s normal adolescent fantasies in the form of a chemical weapon prototype accidentally released, killing most of the population, and leaving its very old and very young survivors to fend for themselves with their altered biology. Males outnumber females by at least two to one. Of the young, only the alpha males and superfertile females survive.
Two years later, Delilah is thrust into a contracted marriage with not one, but two men. Bram and Devon have never met, but they are equally battle hardened and scarred, neither interested in sharing Delilah. Bram is no longer the easy, fun-loving boy Delilah knew and sensual Devon has turned cold and cynical. They’re all forced to navigate Delilah’s turbocharged hormones, mediate the constant conflict between the males, and fight a government suddenly far too interested in dictating who has children with whose DNA.
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OTHER CHARACTERS
Some of these people have books that are either already written or will be written. Some are just important enough as secondary characters (to me) to have made me go look for images to represent them. A couple of them you won’t see in the official Dunham series.
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Jack Blackwood: Protagonist of Black Jack, a novel I completed in 1996. A bond trader-turned-investment banker of Blackwood Securities post a little adventure with deceptively unassuming piano teacher Lydia Charbonneau.
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Melinda Newman: Protagonist of Deacon Blues. A bond trader tricked into helping Detective Deacon deLanza apprehend Jack and Lydia during Black Jack. She hates him, but she can’t let him go, especially since the consequence of Deacon’s trickery goes by the name of Ashley.
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Annie Franklin: Protagonist of New Favorite. Eric’s ex-fiancée, whose life ambition is to amass enough wealth to retire early and trot the globe sipping mai tais and banging cabana boys. She’s well on her way when her car breaks down in the middle of I-80 and needs a tow truck, whose driver, Rafferty Brogan, won’t share his Fruit Stripe gum.
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Nash Piper: Protagonist of Lucky One. Vanessa’s ex-lover, who can’t get over his ex-wife, and walks 1400 miles from the Ozarks to Bozeman, Montana, to see if he can have another chance with Dr. Melanie Merriwether.
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Dirk Jelarde: A public defender, Eric’s business partner, and all-around voice of reason. He’s a Mormon bishop who is happily married to Stephanie, whom he met at BYU, with whom he has five children. He never doubted, never wavered, and pretty much serves as everybody else’s conscience. I don’t have a story for him, as he is not prone to drama or histrionics or insanity. He’s grounded, normal, totally set in his place in life, and feels that he has so much drama going on around him constantly that he doesn’t need any of his own.
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Morgan Ashworth: Cousin to Giselle, Sebastian, and Knox. He’s a disenfranchised economist-turned-novelist, and awkwardly (lonely) faithful gay Mormon. He is Justice’s intellectual idol. (Yeah, I have a story for him. It’ll piss everybody off, either thematically or sexually or both, so it will probably never see the light of day.)
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Nigel Tracey: Cassie’s best friend, 15 years older than she, the man who taught her how to be a million-dollar whore, who also, coincidentally, is in love with and married Cassie’s ex-husband. No story for him because, like Dirk, he keeps his angst and drama level way low.
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Étienne LaMontagne: Cousin to Giselle, Sebastian, Knox, and Morgan. An inventor/engineer and all-around mad scientist, he is in the middle of a messy divorce when he meets a brilliant architect. Trying to hold onto one woman while being attracted to another isn’t working for him…
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Victoria LaMontagne: Protagonist of A Matter of Principle. Twin of Étienne, and an English professor at the University of Seville in Spain. She has no problems being a single woman in the church. No sex angst for her. She sees her sisters and her cousins and the single women of the church as weak women who can’t keep their hormones under control—until an arrogant matador with the right combination of brains and persistence impales her on her own hubris.
