Who is Emma Edsel?

Short answer: the main character of my latest WIP Acktorek.

Emma is a sixteen-year-old senior in high school, who lives in a fictional town in northern California called Gondora Heights. (Don't ask why California. I'm a Georgia girl through and through. These characters just told me it was California, so I went with it.) She's the oldest of two girls, and her younger sister, Carla, is blind. Her dad is hyper focused on her sister, and her mom is OCD with anxiety issues, so Emma tends to get neglected. This is largely why Via in Wonder stood out to me.

Emma has attended a prestigious private school since kindergarten. (Again, I'm a homeschooler through and through, but this was the easiest way to get her to meet the main guy, so I went with it.) She's really smart, and she actually skipped two grades in elementary school, so she'll be graduating early. Emma is really into science, and taking both chemistry and biology at the same time, as advanced as the school offers. She intends to become a molecular biologist. Carla attends the school as well—I guess they have accommodations for the blind—though she's more into the music department. Emma, well, she's not a dreamy, musical type. She wants hard facts.

Emma is kind of a loner. She has one friend, Grace from next door, but even Grace doesn't really understand Emma. To be honest, if they didn't live next door to one another, the chances they'd be friends are next to nonexistent. Grace is always trying to get Emma into pop culture things...unsuccessfully. It doesn't help that Emma is extremely anti-romance.

She's just not interested in boys. It's kind of a relief to write her after Vannie, in this respect. Vannie was quite the challenge to keep at a PG level. Emma? No problem. Emma's too focused on her studies to have time for a boyfriend. She wants to learn everything she can about chemistry and biology. She wants to be a research scientist. But at the root of her attitude towards boys and relationships is her relationship with her family. She doesn't really trust people to actually be there for her. She doesn't trust people to walk by her side and show her they care about what's going on in her life. And there's a part of her that hopes that if she really makes something of herself, her parents will be proud of her. They'll make time for her. They'll show her that they do see something outside of Carla and their own personal problems.

Emma is an interesting character to write. I've always tended to be more about the family-focused, motherly, artsy, musical type (nerd) girls because that's who I am. I'm not career focused. I want a family. But that's not who Emma is. She's a girl that is hurt and broken, and trying to find her place in a world that doesn't accept her—a world she doesn't even truly want to accept. I'm not sure just how Acktorek will turn out, but it's sure to be interesting.