Tante Mattie
A website about me couldn't and wouldn't be complete without a mention of my muses. I am a writer by nature, have been for a very long time, but sometimes it's difficult for non-authors to understand the idea of muses and the impact they have on what people like me (writers) do.
I find it sometimes difficult to explain my muses to others...I recently had the chance to do so with Jason and I found it difficult because it's not an easy thing to explain.
This is the section of the website where I will do my best to put into written words everything that needs to be known about my muses: who they are, why and how they came to be my muses, what they're doing inside my head and why I cannot write without them.
I hope when I'm finished, what's written here will give people a better understanding of what makes my mind tick. These characters are part of my psyche, part of who I am as a person, and understanding them is understanding me.
Muses come in different forms for different writers. Personally, I believe I've always been destined to write fanfiction of some sort because I have always found it much easier to write about fictional characters I saw on television than characters I made up out of my own imagination.
My very first muses were Snoopy and the Peanuts gang...I wrote a little story about them at Christmas time when I was five years old. From there, I wrote stories about the Get-Along Gang, Jem and the Holograms, and numerous other cartoons I watched when I was growing up. When I got older, my tastes matured and I wrote stories based on original characters who were based on characters in my favorite books. I remember making up a female version of "The Outsiders" and writing stories about them. I even made up my very own Baby-Sitters Club. Then I moved on and when I was seventeen years old I wrote my very first novel: a short (128 handwritten pages, only writing on one side of the paper) thing based on my then-favorite TV show, seaQuest DSV. I made up my own supersub, my own crew, my own teenaged genius and my own talking dolphins. Looking back, the story has a lot of flaws and would need a ton of work before it would ever be suitable for publication, but I'm still very proud of it. I spent that entire summer writing it. I've also started another novel about another original character who was based entirely on my favorite soap-opera character, Luke Spencer (General Hospital), but I never got around to finishing it. Maybe someday.
My main point here is, my muses have always been fictional characters, or original characters based on characters I saw on TV or read about in other books. So it really shouldn't surprise anybody when, two years ago, I watched the original X-Men movie and became fascinated by anything having to do with X-Men comics. It would be simple if I could say the X-Men are my muses, but they are not. I tried writing stories about them, but they just did not inspire me correctly. I can't get into their personas. But I did a lot of research on them and bought a lot of comics, and learned very quickly that the X-Men universe went way beyond the characters in the movie. It wasn't long after I started learning that I became fascinated by the Cajun charmer, Remy LeBeau, also known as Gambit.
In my desire to own every single comic with Gambit in the title (which I am now proud to say I have accomplished), I started learning more and more about his past, his background and his life in New Orleans. The writers of the comics were nice enough to give Gambit an interesting history with intriguing characters who grabbed my attention and my mind immediately. These twelve characters (thirteen if you include Gambit, more if you go beyond the still-living characters, which I do sometimes) were so appealing to me, caught my imagination so quickly and so completely that I craved more and more information about them. When I didn't get that information, mainly because the Marvel writers didn't go into too much detail (these characters were created solely to give Gambit something to do when he was on break from being an X-Men) and then the Gambit series was canceled so there hasn't been any place else for them to be developed, I wasn't too upset, even though you would expect me to be.
But no, I wasn't upset, and there is a reason for that. The reason is quite simple. In the year and a half since I first learned of their existance, these characters did more than grab my attention. They also began to inspire me. "Marvel won' develop us! Why don' you do it?" They started whispering to me in their thick Cajun accents. They persisted in waking me up in the middle of the night with story and character development ideas; they started speaking to me almost constantly, giving me insights into them that Marvel never dreamed of thinking of. And I wrote. I wrote and wrote and wrote, and even though their inspiration is coming slower now because I'm a bit more preoccupied, I am still writing. They continue to inspire me and speak to me. They have gone from being minor, unimportant background fillers created by the writers at Marvel to being part of my mind and soul. They are happy when I am happy, and sad when I am. They are part of who I am and they have taken up residence inside my imagination. No, they are not real. I know that. I'm not a total nutcase, even though they have probably given me a slight form of multiple personality disorder. But in some ways, they are real, to me, because they are my muses. I see them and hear them inside my head even though no one else can. That is how they inspire me to write all the stories about them and develop them more deeply and complexly than Marvel ever would.
They are the Thieves and Assassins Guilds of New Orleans. They are my muses and I literally cannot write without them. I know, because I've tried.
Gambit
I'm including Gambit because he has inspired me on numerous occasions when I needed to write a Guild story. And I'm including Tante Mattie because she is the traiteur (spiritual healer) and mother-figure to all my muses, Gambit included, and she is just as important as they are. Besides she inspires me too.
Because Gambit is a thief from the legendary New Orleans Thieves Guild, it made sense that my first bits of inspiration came from his thief family. Here you will get to know a bit more about them and why each of them is special to me in his or her own way. I love these guys, and they have been by far the most vocal of the two sides when it comes to giving me ideas. I just wish they'd stop leaving the ideas hanging after one chapter...
Theoren Marceaux
Mercy LeBeau
Genard Alouette
Claude Potier
Zoe Ishihara
With appearances by: Jean-Luc LeBeau, Henri LeBeau, Belize Marceaux and numerous made-up thieves who I created on my own to give those six some more family members.
The Assassins
For the longest while, I didn't like the Assassins Guild, because they are the long-time enemies of the Thieves, and I love the Thieves. However, as time went on, I learned to love the Assassins too, and their inspiration creates a nice balance with the inspiration of the Thieves. It's occurred to me that one side really can't exist without the other, at least in my universe anyway.
Bella Donna Boudreaux
Fifolet
Singer
Questa
Along with Marius Boudreaux, Julien Boudreaux and a few made-up assassins also created to give those guys some other family members.
