Talie Tappler (Tomorrow News Network: A to Z)

Hello, friends.  My theme for this year’s A to Z Challenge is the universe of Tomorrow News Network, my upcoming Sci-Fi adventure series.  The alphabet being what it is, we’ve had to wait a long time to meet this character.  But finally, the day has come. In today’s post, T is for:

TALIE TAPPLER

Don’t let that cute smile fool you.  This woman is the living embodiment of bad news.  Talie is a journalist and a time traveler, and as the Tomorrow News Network’s most prominent “reporter extraordinaire,” she is sent out to cover the biggest, juiciest, most exciting and most devastating news stories throughout the space-time continuum.

I have been working on Tomorrow News Network for almost ten years now, and right from the start there were three important facts that I knew about Talie.

• Her Professional Vanity: Talie tends to fuss over her hair and make-up, and she dresses in a manner that some might describe as “business sexy.”  Talie is what people in the news business call on-air talent.  Her look is part of her job.  The Tomorrow News Network has over 900 quadrillion viewers, so reporters must always look their absolute best on camera.
• Her Timeless Perspective: In many of the stories Talie covers, people suffer.  People die.  But from Talie’s point of view, this is just history, and isn’t it thrilling to see history unfold exactly as it should?  You can forgive Talie if she seems a bit insensitive at times.  Or maybe you can’t.  Either way, Talie has no intention of interfering with historical events, no matter how desperately you beg for her to intervene.
• Her Secret Enemy: [REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED REDACTED].  But while Talie does believe in the public’s right to know, there are some things that must still be kept confidential.  Everyone is safer that way.

Whenever I talk about Tomorrow News Network, I struggle to describe Talie’s role in the series.  In some ways, she’s the protagonist.  She is the character most prominently featured throughout the series.

But in some ways, she’s more like a recurring antagonist.  Characters like Milo Marrero are desperate to find out what the future will be; Talie is the one keeping the future secret.  She’s the one stopping people like Milo from achieving their goals.

So should I call Talie my protagonist or antagonist?  As one of my beta-readers once said, Talie is definitely an “agonist” of some kind.  But as another beta-reader suggested, perhaps another literary term would suit Talie better: she is “the herald,” the character whose arrival initiates change, the character whose appearance signals that a story is about to begin.

Because if you ever have the misfortune of meeting Talie Tappler, you can be certain that she’s come for a reason, and whatever that reason is, it’s unlikely to be good news.

Next time on Tomorrow News Network: A to Z, there once was a human colony named Earth II.  We’ll find out what happened to it.