Then Again Characters

For readers of my novel Then Again who may have wondered how the five main characters would appear in real life, I created these photorealistic images. Though based on descriptions in the novel, they were leavened with a healthy dose of imagination. Below each image are slightly edited excerpts from various descriptive passages in the book.

Aurélie told me her early childhood had been confusing. A precocious child with savant-like intelligence, she was speaking in complete sentences before she was one year old, and had mastered simple mathematics by age two. I asked about her adolescence, but she refused to go into detail, saying only that after a few years of teenage sexual rebellion and a couple of failed love affairs in her early twenties, she’d given up on finding a mate and become absorbed in her work with Heyoka. It was sad to think that such an intelligent and attractive woman was an old maid in the making, trapped in a loveless world of intellectual isolation. I remembered when I first saw her, being struck by her simple, almost peasant-like beauty. She was petite and slender, with auburn hair cropped in a short afro that framed a heart-shaped face. Her azure eyes, shadowed by long lashes, looked down on a delicate nose and a wide, generous mouth. Gone was the velvet beret that had held her hair in check, and the black-and-white waitress uniform she’d worn at the club had been replaced by stone-washed jeans and a loose-fitting t-shirt featuring a photograph of Jeff Bridges as ‘The Dude’ Lebowski. 

My first clear view of Heyoka Husereau D'Ailleboust nearly knocked me sober. For one thing, he was huge, and—probably due to an autonomic fright response—my senses sharpened and my bleary vision cleared. The smile was still there, but it now protruded from the lower half of a deeply weathered face the color and texture of ruddy sandstone carved by centuries of water erosion. His mountainous nose swept out and down like an undulating inverted ski slope and, in contrast to the smile, there was a notable downcast to his triangular eyes, the pupils of which resembled pools of liquid onyx. Taken as a whole, his countenance projected a combination of intelligence and humor, infused with a touch of melancholy.

I stood in front of the full-length door mirror and examined the updated version of my body. The growth spurt I remembered from my first life was nearly complete, and the results of my daily weight-lifting sessions were evident in the hardened muscles of my arms and chest. I hadn’t been paying much attention to these changes, and when I took a good look at my face, I was surprised to see a pretty handsome fellow looking back. That Paul-Newman look was beginning to appear in my slightly dimpled chin and downturned eyes. Though there was still a whisper of adolescence in my youthful posture and smile, all-in-all it wasn’t a bad look.

The screen began to show a montage of my solo career, starting in the early days after a couple of my songs had charted, and running through the decades that followed. Seeing the venues change from concert halls to small auditoriums to “intimate” nightclub settings was depressing, but even worse was watching my hair lose its color while my smooth, tanned skin faded to chalky parchment like a decomposing corpse.

Doris:
I’d always thought of Doris as a sort of female version of my dad; an efficient, yet friendly RN whose humorous manner and quick wit kept my fear of needles and other medical procedures at bay until the last possible moment. Now, however, I saw a different version, one that was not only sexually attractive, but whose smile and quirky attitude lent a certain element of intrigue to my childhood image of her as an untouchable adult. When she walked out of the cabana in a tight-fitting bathing suit, the dozen or so young interns tracked her with their eyes until she dived in and disappeared under the water. It was my first detailed look at her unadorned by her nurse’s uniform, and it revealed a body unlike those from my era, where six-pack-abs and lean, athletic figures were considered sexy. No, this was a body from the ‘50s, hourglass shaped, with a narrow waist and beautifully proportioned hips and breasts. When she emerged from the water and shook out her short, blond hair, the boys gathered around her in an embarrassing attempt to outdo one another with their antics.

Ellie:
Ellie, whose intelligence and beauty would one day outshine even her mother’s, was referred to by the gang as “Super Baby,” and no one ever complained about the fact that she spent almost all her waking hours—first crawling, then toddling—around the studio. When she wasn’t on the move, she would sit quietly, watching Jimmy and Sam operate the huge mixdown console, or looking out through the glass partition at the musicians as they played.

“You need to keep a closer eye on Ellie,” Aurélie said. “She’s a beautiful girl, Rix, and I don’t think you’ve noticed how fast she’s growing up. That wouldn’t be so much of a problem were it not for the fact that her intelligence makes her curious about everything, and it won’t be long before her curiosity turns to sex. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that an emotionally immature, sexually ripe virgin rubbing elbows with musicians and famous rock stars will be particularly vulnerable.”

She was right, I hadn’t even begun to think about such things, nor had I paid much attention to Ellie’s physical maturation. But now that I thought about it, there was the growth spurt and the recently appearing breasts. I hadn’t worried about her safety or wellbeing because of her intelligence and logical way of thinking. Plus, she had several dedicated protectors in the studio who’d been looking out for her almost since the day she was born. However, if she decided on her own to do something clandestine, she was so clever that no one would even suspect anything was going on.

The Story Behind Then Again

The story behind Then Again evolved from my years as a singer-songwriter, my later career as a science and medical journalist, and my love for Native American culture. From my early teens through my late twenties I worked as a guitarist, keyboard player, and vocalist, playing in several rock bands and as a studio musician. I later became a singer/songwriter, and delved into record producing with limited success. The impetus for writing the novel stemmed from imagining what it would be like to live my life over again while retaining all my accumulated wisdom and experience. In contemplating the changes I might make and their possible ramifications, I soon realized that it would be far more complex and perilous than I had originally thought, and I became fascinated with attempting to extrapolate all the pitfalls and problems I would encounter.

Drawing on my research in theoretical mathematics, quantum physics, and Native American spiritual practices, I decided to try and develop a story through which such a scenario might take place. At first, combining these three disciplines seemed like an impossible task, especially since I’d made up my mind early on not to base the novel on a fantasy premise. The most difficult aspect of the writing process was figuring out how to combine hard science with the more esoteric concepts of spirituality. Fortunately, good friend and fellow author, Burt Kempner, who had conducted extensive studies of Native American culture, became my advisor on the project, and I was eventually able to come up with a plausible, though somewhat metaphysical scenario.

I also must give credit to Fritjof Capra and the film Mindwalk, which was based on his excellent book The Turning Point. It was from that film that I derived much of the material I used in Then Again to explain in lay terms the complexities and confounding nature of quantum mechanics and particle physics.   

Written in three parts (Now, Then, and Then Again), the novel centers on three main characters: Rix Vaughn, an aging, drug-ravaged, alcoholic singer/songwriter nearing the end of a less-than-illustrious career; Heyoka Husereau D'Ailleboust, a world renowned particle physicist and Native American spiritual adept; and Aurélie, a brilliant mathematician who serves as Rix’s spiritual and scientific mentor.

Though a bit offbeat and somewhat humorous in tone, the story is a serious one that incorporates a variety of emotional, psychological and sociopolitical topics, as well as an in-depth examination of what is known as the “butterfly effect”—that is, how everything we do in life has consequences far beyond what most of us could imagine.