Meet the Cast of Ink, Flame, & Bone (They're a Lot)
Every story starts with the people in it. Here's who you'll be spending time with in Lost Lantern.
Vesper
Vesper is not a chosen one. She didn't ask for any of this. She's a normal person who finds out her dead mother had a secret — and once you know a secret exists, you can't unknow it. So she does what any reasonable person would do: she goes looking.
Everything that happens after that is her fault. She would probably agree with that assessment.
She's frightened, stubborn, and more capable than she gives herself credit for. She's the kind of character I root for precisely because she has no idea what she's walking into.
Shadow Howl (Shawl)
If you've read Shadow Howl's Completely Terrible Guide to Surviving Lost Lantern, you've already met her. If you haven't — Shawl is Vesper's familiar. She has the head of a cat and the body of a dog, she is fierce in the way only small creatures with big opinions can be, and she will absolutely tell you when you're making a mistake. She just won't stop you from making it.
She is my favorite character to write. I will not apologize for this.
Cora
A memory child is exactly what it sounds like — the memory of a child, coming back in pieces. Not all at once. Not gently. Cora arrives the way grief does: unexpectedly, incompletely, and with more weight than seems possible for something so small.
She is not a ghost. She is something older than that.
Lenore
Vesper's mother is dead before the story begins. She is present anyway.
Lenore is the secret at the center of everything — who she was, what she knew, what she kept, and why. She shows up in the ways the dead do when they meant something: in the choices Vesper makes, in the things Vesper can't leave alone, in the moments where the past refuses to stay where it was put.
Ink, Flame, & Bone is Book 1 of the Last Lantern Chronicles. More soon.
— Rita Jo
Want to know when Ink, Flame, & Bone is out? Join the list — you'll get early chapters, beta reader calls, and whatever else ends up on Rita Jo's desk.
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