I promised a longer introduction to the premise and characters of my Echoes of the Just Trilogy, launching March 18th from Aethon Books. I decided to start with the three maid protagonists.
Jamar Tyrone Johnson
Jamar is 23, and in in his eighth month as a probationary Correction Officer at the Monroe Correction Facility, which is Washington State’s verbose term for “prison.” (If you read Cascadia Fallen, yes—it is THAT prison!) I wanted a diverse cast, and chose to have two men and one woman, each from a different race and heritage. Jamar’s parents never married, but because his father is a virtuous man who believes in the concept of fatherhood, not just “procreation”… Jamar has had a great structure to keep him grounded. Where his South Seattle friends ofter wound up in gangs, Jamar wound up in Taekwondo classes. Turns out, that’s not a bad skill to have when the world falls apart.
Jamar has two half siblings, sixteen year-old Jalen and Felicity, a sister three years younger than that. Their mother is divorced, and her elderly mother lives with them in a modest house to help out with the bills. In fact, Jamar and Jalen have to share a room. But he’s focused on passing his probationary period over trying to move out and find someone to date. The family has a mutt named Charcoal.
Jamar’s father, James, lives only a few blocks away. He becomes a central character to the rest of the family, protecting his former lover and her minor kids while their son is helping with the crisis. A bit rough to listen to when he speaks, the independent remodeler/“jack-of-all-trades” is much smarter than he sounds, and quite the hoot at times. I wrote James’s character specifically to address the high-rate of fatherlessness in Black American communities, and the importance men play, even when the parents aren’t married. It is a shame than many good men get treated so poorly in court based on the actions of the POSs.
Ramona Maria Perez (O’Hanrahan)
Nearly 39, the former high school athlete and Seattle Police Sergeant is married with one daughter. Husband Noel is a prosecutor with the King County District Attorney’s Office, which makes him a big target in the story. Her parents and siblings live in other parts of the state.
Ramona had made detective in just a few years. She was the lead in a case which eventually ties several gang murders together in a case that covered three counties. A few years later, she started a several-year stint on the full-time SWAT team. Once she had her daughter, who is now 8, she went back to patrol, working North Seattle.
Ramona is tough and smart, and she uses her maiden name on the job for the dual purposes of keeping her family safe, and being a positive role model for the Latino community.
Not gonna lie… this trilogy wound up really putting the hurt on Ramona. Out of the three mains, she and Kevin get the worst of it… you know, other than several secondary protagonists who die 🤣 All three mains go through the “wringer” but Ramona’s is much more physical than the other two. By the end, though, I was convinced she is one of the most bad ass women I’ve ever written.
Kevin Fulton Richardson
He is 20, and in three weeks, he goes from wide-eyed kid with no idea about the future to a true, battle-tested leader who can do the right things in dire moments of intense stress. Now, I ran with a “K” name theme for him and his siblings, so be ready for that. Kevin is a volunteer with the State Guard, not to be confused with the National Guard.
The trilogy opens with a prologue from two years earlier. Kevin is getting ready to start college. Life is grand, or so he thinks, until the rug gets yanked out. His father lets him in on just a nugget of the truth behind a horrible lie that has shaped Kevin’s entire life. It is a truth that surfaces in the second book, and it forces him to make a few choices about the kind of person he wants to be. By then, he and Jamar have bonded like they’ve been best friends their entire lives, and Jamar is instrumental in pulling Kevin out of a dark, emotional hole. Where Ramona's story has you cringing at her physical and mental pain, Kevin's trials will have you feeling sorry for him on a deep level.
Kevin has three siblings. Kenny is married with children and lives in Spokane. Keith is the dark sheep—he left to pursue music in Seattle and the family rarely hears from him. Kendra is a high school senior and still lives with Kevin, his mother, and their grandparents in the small mountain town of Republic.
I stopped in Republic for an hour in 2018. We camped at a nearby state park for a night on the way to Sandpoint, Idaho for my first trip to the Panhandle Preparedness Expo. It was immediately after that trip that I’d finally made the decision to start writing Cascadia Fallen. That fact doesn’t have much to do with Republic, itself, but it is a beautiful area of a state I’ve come to hate for all the wrong reasons. Politics of Washington aside, eastern Washington, and the north central Cascades, is a very tempting place to move for all the other reasons. I wanted Kevin to be a country kid lost in the big city, so I chose Republic to be his home.
But I’m getting ahead. In several weeks, I plan on writing a full piece just on Kevin’s home town, which is where the climax is set.
There you go. Kevin, Ramona, and Jamar are “the Just” who are referenced in the series title. Coming up with a world-shifting disaster was the easy part. I needed a common thread for the good people in these intertwined stories. First Responders who must toe the line to protect good from evil seemed like the perfect group. I’m super pleased with the action and the characters’ struggles in these books! If you dare to go on the ride, you won’t be disappointed!