Hello! Welcome to the first official blog post of the month of May! To kick off one of the two themes of the month, Female Character Month, I decided to start with the ladies of the Our Lady series. Her we go….

The Ladies of Our Lady of Righteous Rage

While there is a pretty long list of female characters in the Our Lady series, I’m going to focus on the most important ladies, who appear across nearly every book.

Amy Edwards: Amy is the lead character of the series, and she handles most of the narration.  She grew up in a single-parent home, with her two brothers and her sister. Raised in Bayside, in New York, Amy falls in love with Punk Rock when she receives a copy Green Day’s Dookie album. From there, she decides to learn to play the guitar. She and her friends start playing, and eventually form a band, Our Lady of Righteous Rage, named after a poem Amy wrote. She’s also a mother: she and ex-husband David Sarconi adopted his cousin Jon when he was little, and despite the divorce Amy and Jon are still extremely close.

Dee Seybrook: Amy’s best friend, and the wife of Our Lady’s bassist, Aidan Sirci. Dee is petite, but she has no problem standing up for herself, and refuses to be pushed around. She’s a singer, and a drummer; she discovers she has a natural talent for drumming and develops it very quickly.

Nyda Summit: Dee’s cousin, and Nick Lianetti’s wife. Nyda is soft-spoken and tall, and an artist. Photography is her passion, and she has even taken pictures of the members of Our Lady for their album covers.

Vanessa Vance: The woman with the plan. Vanessa comes up with the idea of running a business with her friends in high school. She’s the co-founder of the Urban Collective: the store she and her friends created in order to sell their books, music and artwork. Vanessa is ambitious and a handworker, and will do anything to help her business and her friends succeed.

Carmen Portez: Carmen went to school with Amy, Dee and Vanessa. She’s a talented painter, and she began selling her artwork while she was still in high school. She eventually opened her very own art studio, Portez Art Studio, where she shows her artwork, and the work of other local artists.

Erin Michaels: Erin goes from quiet girl who likes to read, to a Punk Rock/Emo chick with a passion for music. She meets the band, and begins to work for them, after a tragic experience with her family brings her and her mother to New York. She later becomes the band’s social media expert. She’s particularly fond of Amy, and thinks of her as a big sister.

Olivia Midkiff: One of Jon’s friends and a really talented drummer.  Olivia is upbeat and generally in a good mood. When Dee takes her under her wing, the two form a big sister-little sister relationship. Olivia is sometimes unsure of herself, but she’s learning to be more confident. 

 

I created all of these characters years before I wrote this series. I used bits and pieces of my personality, and my mother’s personality, when I developed them for the Our Lady series. There’s a lot of Mom in Dee and Nyda (especially Dee). Amy and Erin represent my punk rock side. One of the reasons Our Lady is written using stream of consciousness, is because I wanted to give watch character an opportunity to grow and change. You meet Amy, Dee, Nyda, Vanessa and Erin, as teens, and you get to watch them “grow up”, so to speak. And, it was important to have a female character in the lead role. Amy’s talents as a guitarist, song writer, and artist, reflect my personal belief that girls can do anything. She’s a challenge to the status quo.

If you haven’t read Our Lady of Righteous Rage, I hope you decided to pick it up and see what its all about. I think you’ll enjoy it.