Character profile: Keller Anis

Thanks to the brilliant character creator in Star Trek Online I can actually show you how I envisage some of my characters. First up is Keller Anis, engineer of the MF Crazy Horse in my seriel novel Alive!

Name: Keller Anis
Age: 30

Position: Engineer, Martian Freighter Crazy Horse

Personality: Stubborn, dedicated sometimes to the point of losing focus on other things, serious at work but relaxed off-duty.

Misc: Keller is a very talented engineer and looks on her ship almost as her child. She believes she can fix anything, given the time and equipment, and so far hasn't been faced with a situation to prove her wrong.
She can be stubborn and hard headed at times, and often butts heads with the captain when she believes her solution is better. They have a love-hate relationship where they both respect each other and can rub along quite well, but often find themselves argueing. The captain reserves his favourite insult - 'damned woman' - especially for Keller.
Keller enjoys playing basketball and has rigged up a net in the engine room storage bay.

Captain Shanran Dak frowned and punched a button next to the speaker. “Dammit Keller, could you try not to scrape the paint quite so hard next time?” he growled into the microphone headset he was wearing. “She gets enough battering through the asteroid belt without you adding more dents.”

“I’ve told you before, Captain, I’d have no problems fixing the dents up if you’d get me a proper repair kit,” Keller replied. “Besides, don’t blame me – you were steering,” she added.

Dak scowled at the speaker and swore under his breath as he punched buttons on the control panels to shut down the ship’s engines. “Damned woman, got an answer for everything,” he muttered.

Inspiration & character creation: I really don't know how I came up with Keller's first name. It just popped into my head one day when I was thinking about Star Trek - I know, geeky, sorry! Her last name came from the 'star anis' plant.
Her original incarnation was as a half-Betazoid half-Romulan counsellor in the 27th century in a Trek fan-fic, which was never designed to be read by anyone other than me. I didn't really flesh out her character very much to start with, although she's always had a stubborn streak. When I started writing Alive! I was looking for a strong female character and she came to mind. A few tweaks later and she appeared in current form.
The quote above was actually the first line I ever wrote for her in Alive! and once she'd said that it helped set her character even more for me.
I think Keller is now one of my favourite characters - strong, clever, argumentative, stubborn - and I'm looking forward to exploring her more as the story progresses.