So here we have the first piece of artwork commissioned for City of Dreams. Note that this picture isn’t symbolic or representational in any way; this scene actually takes place in the book.
What you’re seeing is the protagonists – or rather, the protagonist and her love interests – being attacked by one of the Mara, a servant of Nightmare.
The girl with the green-glowing hand is Aislin Rourke, and she is Our Heroine. She’s a small town girl who has come to the Big City to follow her dream of Broadway stardom, and she’s finding it harder than she expected…and she expected it to be hard. You see, Aislin had planned to share an apartment with two friends from college, but both of them backed out, leaving her paying all of the rent on an apartment where it would have been all she could do to pay her originally-planned third. The acting jobs are slow in coming, and the diner where she’s working as a waitress until she makes it big is a hellhole. A good shift is one where the sexual harassment is only verbal. Her landlord offered to let her pay her rent with something other than cash, and her response left her a week away from sleeping on the streets. It was at this low point that she accidentally wandered into a nightmare world in the Times Square subway station one night.
The girl on the left who looks like the living embodiment of the “black and nerdy” trope is Keisha Green. She grew up in the City, in Harlem to be specific. She’s young enough to have missed the real Bad Old Days, but she’s still watched her neighborhood go from the tail end of the Crack Epidemic to too gentrified for poor people to live there (in some parts; others are still very much the homes of the poor). A shy girl, she’s always loved books, and her dream career is to write her own. She’s working on it.
Keisha likes girls, and while she was attracted to Aislin from the moment she saw her (how could anybody who likes girls not be?), she only started to love her over a long afternoon of talking about everything and nothing when Daniel was out. Unfortunately, her shyness isn’t going to do her any favors in that regard. Fortune favors the brave, and faint heart never won fair lady. Not that Keisha is faint of heart! She’s a bit overwhelmed by the crazy shit going on at the moment, but once she collects her wits, she’ll do what she can to fight the supernatural monster. But if she doesn’t speak up, she’s gonna miss the girl.
Fun fact about Keisha: her parents are very Christian (which is going to cause problems when they find out about her sexuality), and tried to give her some early education in Christianity by giving her some Christian comics – like those old “Christian Archie” comic books from Spire, and a picture Bible – but it backfired. Young Keisha didn’t see any difference between the Christian comics and regular comics…and by the time her folks noticed she was into what they considered genuinely un-Christian comics…like Neil Gaiman’s Sandman – it was too late.
The guy in the back preparing to use his electric guitar as a bludgeoning weapon – or at least giving it his best shot, considering how far out of his weight class a Mara is – is named Daniel Cohen. To be honest, the picture is a little off-model from what I had intended for him. What I had in mind was more like this:
Daniel is a musical polymath. If it can make music, he can either play it, or learn very quickly. He has a band, of course, and is actually making enough money from it to pay the rent. His preferred genre is epic rock because I’m writing him, that’s why. And he might…might…just be good enough to either bring it back, or at least be his generation’s Meat Loaf. Maybe with a little Dream to get him through…
Daniel met Aislin at the same time Keisha did, when Aislin applied to be their housemate, and he was just as attracted. He didn’t start falling in love until the afternoon they spent hanging around in his room, with her singing along with his music. Of her suitors, he’s the one who’s most forthright and bold. That will serve him well, but there is one other suitor who’s willing to do anything.
Of course, that’s all if they live past this moment.
The attacking Mara has a backstory, too. Oh, yes. She’s still arguably human, and she has her reasons for doing what she does. But I don’t think I’ll give that away right now. That would be telling.