Ashlei Gray is the protagonist of the novel, Disconnect, the sequel novel to Connect and one of three protagonists of the third and final novel of the Connection series, Reconnect. Originally, I had set out to only make two novels for the Connection series; Connect and Reconnect. Ashlei came to fruition from two ideas that I had; first, I wanted to make a female protagonist, and, second, I didn’t like Connect’s Jim. While editing Connect for its final draft, it came to me that Jim had run his course as a character. I didn’t really have anything else for him to do in the sequel, and he comes across as flat and uninteresting throughout the first book. His character is one of a representative of a character who gets into a stable relationship that ultimately doesn’t work out. Unfortunately, he isn’t a good foil for Rusty in Reconnect, so I wanted someone with a little more teeth. That’s when I came up with Dante’s character. This meshed up with the concept of a female protagonist; the unnamed bartender in Connect that Rusty hires momnts before his interview with Rebecca. That position showed promise to be filled.
Enter Ashlei; a down on her luck divorcee who has to fend for herself after gettign kicked out of her house. I don’t have a specific city that she came from in mind, myself, but I never thought it was important to go into detail about it. Her past isn’t as interesting as her journey during Disconnect. I wanted to do a story similar to Rusty’s in Connect, but I needed some more time to pass before Reconnect. So, naturally, I had to slow it down. Connect takes place over the span of two years. Disconnect has a timeline of seven years. I originally wanted to focus more on Rusty during this book, but, since his open-ended proposal to Zelda at the end of the original story, his role in the coming years was one of devoted husband, business owner, and father. Not exactly easy to match him with the high-paced dating formula introduced in Connect. As a result, I needed to switch to a different protagonist. Ashlei takes the job as a bartender as a Rusty surrogate, and Dante takes up Angel’s previous role as wingman and relationship coach. Dante, of course, has a much bigger role in the SilentVerse story as a whole, so he will have to grow out of his role as Ashlei’s mentor sooner or later.
Despite her meager apartment, Ashlei is a character that comes from wealth. When we meet her in Disconnect, she is someone who has been bought out of her company by her ex-husband. She decides to take the bartending job not because of money, but because of social experience. Spending all of her time behind the keys of a computer has left her socilly stunted. However, she and many of those around her know that her true passion lies outsie of the bartending job. There is a lot more of my experiences of socializing in Ashlei than I did with Rusty. In many early scenes of Disconnect, Ashlei is a part of a conversation and those in those conversations will talk over her, forcing her into a role of active listener. Sometimes even areas where they are talking about her. This is framed as something that people have done to her for a while and that she has to get around it and become a more involved participant in the socializing process. It’s a very subtle issues I’ve had to deal with many times in my personal life, and I thought it would be compelling to put in as a barrier that Ashlei needed to overcome. Many other writers would view this as something that the character would need to overcome by addressing it as being ignored or overlooked and to rise up and steal the spotlight. Ashlei views it as a means to take the reins of the conversation and become its master. She develops a subtle intrigue through the mysterious way she only really gets involved in a conversation when she wants to, and only says what she does when she wants to on her own terms. A far healthier way to approach assumed shyness, and I aspire to be able to perform it as well as her, someday.
In terms of her sexuality, Ashlei is bisexual. She was always planned to be bisexual, and I have had her future partner planned since I introduced her into the Connection series. While I’m on the subject, I tend to make almost all of my characters somewhere on the bisexal spectrum. The only stark exception are the characters Rusty and Rick, who are both strictly gynephillic heterosexuals. Ashlei was my first foray into writing a main character with sexual and romantic attraction to multiple genders, so it was important to keep her behavior and mannerisms as realistic as possible. The last thing I wanted to do was write a story about a character coming to terms with her newly discovered sexuality and all of the struggles associated with coming out. There’ nothing wrong with those stories, but it’s been done so often that it has become a cliched storyline. Ashlei has been out for half her life at the start of Disconnect, and is used to correcting people’s assumptions of her having attraction to male and female genders. It’s my goal with characters like Ashlei to not make a statement about sexuality with a coming out story, but instead to normalize the day to day romantic struggles of being bisexual. The different relationships and expectations of dating men and women. Exposing the mundaneness of it without fetishizing it. Ashlei’s not a pornstar or sex worker, but, despite her best efforts to live her normal life, she becomes seen as a fiery temptress because of the unconscious bias associated with fetishizing bisexuality. This affects her in a negative way, especially after her rape late into the Disconnect story.
I am not going to talk much about her rape in Disconnect. I’m only calling attention to it because it is perhaps the biggest turning point in her life. It changes her, not for the better, but in a permanent way. She doesn’t report it because its not something that she wants to go through the trouble of doing. It’s a traumatic experience that she internalizes, because not everyone is going to go through the healthy route that Rusty went through after Jessica’s death and seek out help in order to heal. Deep down, Ashlei blames herself for what happened to her.
Ashlei’s journey thoughout Disconnect is one of personal growth in socailization through experience. She has the skills to attract many friends already, but, because of many years of a young marriage and a career spent mostly in isolation, has a lack of experience using them. It takes her the course of the book to learn how to be in a social relationship with many different kinds of people. She has a rocky friendship with Lucy and learns about forgiveness. Carl and her become friends to give her a male companion and confidant without the presence of romantic interest. Rusty, despite being only a year older than her, becomes a sort of father figure. Dante goes from someone in a position of power to a romantic interest, which ultimately leads to their reunion in the conclusion of the story. Andy is a character that Ashlei views as a possible romantic interest,but values her friendship too highly to entertain the notion of pursuing her romantically. (similarly to Emma’s rold in Rusty’s life.) Finally, there is Angel. Angel and Ashlei’s relationship is complicated, much like Rusty’s and Angel’s relationship. They don’t meet until late in the story, and they don’t have many interactions, but their chemistry together is a playful and flirty energy that will be explored in greater depth in the future. I will be writing a Behind the Waltz on Angel once the Connection series is concluded, along with the mysterious third protagonist of Reconnect. Don’t expect one on Dante anytime soon, though.
-Rj
