Who is Jet?
Art by Stephanie Brown @ Offbeat Worlds
Jet is from Gexalatia, his and Nyx's home world on the other side of a portal that is hidden in the East Texas woods. He hails from the country of Siccita, the son of the king in the south, King Paraximus Lamia. Jet was once a great general, leading his father's armies to many victories. The only person he could never conquer was Nyx's grandmother, Queen Liana Estrella of Ymber.
Jet was released from his imprisonment by Liana on the condition that he would help her. Jet was resistant to her proposal, thinking she was the enemy, but over time he has come to realize that she is not the one who betrayed him. Jet vows vengeance on his father and those who follow him. But first, he must go to Lucky and find Nyx.
While he has many talents, one of them is not getting along well with others. Jet is crass and unpolished, quick to anger and even quicker to kill. He's supposed to be winning Nyx over in order to train her, not making her life miserable.
However, he proves that he can be a formidable ally when Nyx is hunted by assassins from Paraximus' court. It seems he does have some redeeming qualities after all.
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What was your inspiration for Jet?
Just as Nyx embodied parts of my life, I feel like Jet does so as well. Jet embodies parts of my life that were trying and the emotions that I was struggling to overcome. I battled depression through my late teens and into my twenties, and, being undiagnosed, my emotions often manifested in weird ways. I was able to let out my frustration through the way that I wrote Jet. In the last several years, as I've gotten the depression under control, I've been able to truly see Jet as a key character and less as some stand-in for my negative feelings.
Why the son of a king?
I wanted to make Jet's heritage something important. As I was examining my own life and my own struggles, I was imagining how Jet would feel having fallen so far. He was once very powerful and feared, but now he's reviled and often disrespected by his former peers. This plays on how Jet has changed as a character and the struggles he has had to overcome, which echoes the struggles I've overcome in my life as well.
What can we expect from Jet in future books?
Like Nyx, Jet has a long journey ahead. Not in the sense of finding a place in a strange culture, but in the sense of finding a new place in a world he thought he knew. I like to think that Jet symbolizes growing up and becoming stable and understanding where your life is finally going. He symbolizes overcoming bad things that happen in life and finding a way to be normal, even when you feel like your past defines you and sets you apart from everyone else. Jet's struggle will be to see that he isn't all that different, despite some of the challenges he has to overcome on his own.
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