From My Journal – Character Sketch

This week, we’re going into my world building journal and taking a look at the main character of my Maker trilogy, Frankie. There are a lot of traits in her that I have myself, but that’s the truth of almost all writers. Injection of our best and worst qualities feels like the thing one does when one tells stories.

Brangienne “Frankie” Frankovitch

• Born September 12th, at the time of the story, she is 25 years old.
• 5’7″
• Brown eyes
• Black hair (long, almost to her hips, impossibly curly, usually worn in a braid)
• Average weight, about 132 pounds
• Daughter of Zelda Frankovitch
• Sister to Serena Shorn

Frankie is from Lowell, KY. She lived with her mother for a few years after high school when she’d saved up for a down payment on a house. Now she lives on her own on the south side of town. A friend from high school, Sam Wiseman, returns from a military tour or two and needs a place to live. Frankie offers him a room. She helps him get a job at the grocery store where she works.

She is close to her mother, not so much her sister. They have Sunday dinners, along with Logan, her brother-in-law. These dinners are often emotionally explosive between Serena and Zelda. Such a contentious life and relationship makes the sisters sometimes seem like enemies. As such, they see each other infrequently.

Frankie is not an overly loud person. She tends to keep to herself. She isn’t anti-social, simply prefers to remain alone. She has a very dry sense of humor and often finds terrible jokes to pass to Sam while they’re supposed to be working. She is loyal almost to a fault. Once her opinion of someone is formed, she takes a lot of convincing to believe otherwise–both in a positive and negative way.

She is frugal only because she doesn’t want to buy needlessly. Her most frivolous purchase was a television. She thinks Cottonelle toilet paper is a luxury. She tries not to buy anything sold in plastic, but living the way she does is good only if she can be consistent, something Kentucky isn’t known for–at least not in Lowell. The only thing consistent about Lowell is everyone is privy to your business regardless of if you want them to be.

Frankie does not believe in God. She does not lose sleep over this. As of this writing Frankie is scared of nothing. Of course this changes when she witnesses a murder of someone close to her. Her mother. She loses sight of good things for a while, which adds yet another layer of what she has to do in The Keeper of Time.

Alongside her fierce loyalty is her ability to remain emotionally detached from situations and people. Even when she learns who her father is, she struggles to feel much of anything. Granted, she learns this right at the same time her mother is killed, so people tend to think she’s stuck in some kind of emotional limbo. She loves deeply despite her lack of attachment. Almost like it’s real if Frankie feels it.

She loves the color blue, and hydrangeas are her favorite flower.