So now I have a nifty name. I like how closely Mama Nancy (if you run it all together) sounds like “necromancy” (magic over the dead) or “onieromancy” (magic over dreams). More importantly it gives me a motif: spiders.

I feel confident in writing a strong, voodoo priestess character. But…how do I make her different than say, every other old voodoo woman ever written in any movie or novel? I take that name and that motif and I let it shape her, define her.

First of all, she is tall, and thin (ever notice how old voodoo women are always plump?). She has long, flexible limbs (she’s very lithe for her age), with long, spindly fingers. Her fingers never stop moving, they always seem to be in creeping motion (like spider legs?). She is likely a very tactile person.

Webs…those are meticulous. Mama Nancy is very meticulous, very careful, very far thinking. The reader will not know just how meticulous she is until the very last chapter (the epilogue, in fact) and when I let you step back far enough to glimpse her whole grand web.

Other Names
Oral history intrigues me. Urban legends are another form of that. The inner city landscape that Nancy exists in is full of these and she is at the center of much of it. She is a figure of urban legend and a complicated mythos. People know to come to her. Ice killer gang bangers know not to antagonize her. Story is sometimes more powerful than magic and Mama Nancy knows this. As such, she has acquired a plethora of names along the way:

-Mama Spex: Kids think this is for the purple shades she wears. Older folk will whisper to ya (but not too loud) that its actually short for “Specter.” Further whispers inform you that Mama Nancy can speak to the dead, speak for the dead, and, sometimes, they walk for her. Nancy only shrugs, if asked.

-Aunt Nancy: Nancy is also a weaver, and very good at her art. The children call her Aunt Nancy, after the spider woman. She takes in a handful of children, off the streets, and teaches them her art, gives them a skill by which they can help feed themselves later on. [This idea is based, primarily, on a woman I met in Africa. Her name was Mama Tie-dye. Her art was tie-dye – she made amazing pictures and art and clothing (things I never thought you could do with tie-dye). She would take in children from the very poor city and teach them the art…cause there are always rich tourists around to bye. I wish I had bought more.]

-Mama Lily: She lovingly grows the white flowers and is said to use them in rituals involving death.