What Helen Looks Like!

From the time I first began writing the Helen story, and Helen was a very young college freshman, I had a mental image of her.  She looked a little defensive, very vulnerable, reserved, determined, frightened.  Of course she had all that incredible curly hair, like spun gold, as I wrote in the first few paragraphs of the story.  She was a fantastical character, an almost elfin child; and—similarly with many of the characters that teenagers create—she had piercings and fetishistic details (I just read that that word means something different than what I intended, but there just isn't a better word) such as little details of her underwear—which are hardly worth going into now!

As time goes on, and Helen absorbs and acquires amazing things from her friends and the people around her, the defensiveness disappears; the vulnerability is greatly reduced, the reserve goes away to some degree.  The slight build rapidly gives way to a tall, willowy girl, who puts on muscle with her athletic activities.  As she begins to practice martial arts with her teen lover, Leila (the child of a nightclub owner in Florida, who had become an adept in the martial arts at the tender age of twelve, and killed a man already at that age, while defending her mother from a rapist), and the two girls go on reckless adventures that involve fighting, I imagined Helen becoming stronger and more confident.

After a year away from College, living in the Wilds of Canada (I don't really know whether there even are wilds in Canada; to me Canada is a place where anything could happen, and does!) hunting and farming for food, Helen returns to complete her B.A., after which she follows the lovely Indian girl, Lalitha, to India; is kept away from Lalitha by the latter's father, and later her husband; spends a few months as a custodian in a rural school; begins to have trouble with her memory, and lives for a decade in a poor Indian Roman Catholic commune, where she gradually forgets her identity, and begins to be called Sister Mary.

She has medical problems—a brain tumor—to treat which she is sent back to the US, where by a coincidence she is identified, and returned to her family.  By this time, she is physically an adult, and the years in India finish the work of making her body type essentially inherited from her Norwegian father, John Nordstrom.  She is tall and rangy, and the curly blonde hair is all from Daddy Nordstrom.  But her face has a certain sweetness, which is inherited from her one Finnish grandmother, Grandma Kuikkonen, on whom I did not bestow a first name!  Finns Helen meets seem to see a fellow-Finn in Helen, and she also has a quarter Swedish ancestry, but Helen is physically mostly Norwegian.

Covers
All this has a bearing, of course, when it comes to creating covers for the Helen stories.  On one hand, it is a mistake to represent characters too closely on book covers, because ultimately the most dedicated readers have their own mental image of a character, and a cover representation that conflicts with their mental image becomes a stumbling-block—to some readers.  On the other hand, it is good to have what is called a reference on which to base different covers, so that they plausibly look like the same person, doing different things, or at different times and ages.

Helen Nordstrom, by Halchroma
Copyright (c) 2019

On DeviantArt, the website that I joined with the main objective of acquiring artwork for these covers, they have the concept of the original character, OC, which is precisely what I have been trying to describe.  For the younger members, it means some fantastic superhero, where they describe the powers and the characteristics of their original character, the fights that he or she is likely to win, the personality traits, the costumes, etc!  [Added later: this is all used when these characters are used for computer / video games.  The character becomes a game piece and the player is given a list of the properties of the so-called playable character, and it interacts with other playable characters, with randomized outside objects thrown in.]

So I selected an artist who seemed promising, and asked her whether she would consider collaborating in creating the original character of Helen Nordstrom.  And just yesterday, she delivered (of course there was a certain amount of going back and forth) something that was stunningly convincing!  Except for the fact that Helen has much more curly hair than this image has, still, within the errors permissible in hand-painted art, this piece is wonderful!  I just had to share.  (I have asked the lady to try to modify the piece to depict even curlier hair.  Nevertheless, if you think about it, a true blond with straight hair usually seems to have thin hair.  The curlier it is, the more body it appears to have, and the body of the hair in this picture is certainly appropriate to curly hair.

This is Helen about the time at which she was teaching at Westfield College (Helen & Sharon), and occasionally conducting.  At this time, she was about 35, but according to the story, her mental age was about 25.  That is something that I would have had to do a lot of fast talking to convince an artist about, because a typical artist isn't very concerned with subtleties of personality, or the detailed medical history of a character, which might result in a trait that is largely invisible.  [Or perceived to be invisible.  In Helen's case, her friends believe---with me--that Helen's facial expression shows that in her mind she's about a decade younger than she actually is.]

But isn't it wonderful?!  If this artist were to achieve the success and fame that is promised by this piece of work, I would be inordinately proud to be able to show this early work!

Kay