Of Characters and Things: Miki St. JohnMiki St. John actually came into existence on the front stoop of an imaginary Victorian house in San Francisco. I had a love interest in mind for him, a maybe-detective or maybe-professor named Quinn Morgan and Miki had suffered a great tragedy with the loss of his bandmates. He also had an alley cat.
If you’ve read the books, the only thing that stayed the same was his name and the bandmates and well, the ending of Sinners’ Gin put that all to a lie.
So… Miki.
Miki is built off of a lot of my life experiences as well as my stint as a counselor for a juvie hall / halfway house for teens. I’m not going to say the world is a shitty place because honestly, it isn’t. There are people out there who love their kids and try to do their best by them. And there also is a large percentage of people who view their children as disposable meat, something to be used both sexually and sadistically in order to satisfy some craven itch they have. Their own kids. Other peoples’ kids. It doesn’t matter to those people. But they are there.
I didn’t want to focus on … the horrors of being caught in that nightmare but rather someone who survived it but was broken around the edges. Because no matter how much therapy one gets, they’re never going to achieve that baseline solid foundation someone gets when raised by someone who loves them.
Trust me on that.
Once that slab of faith is broken, it’s constantly in a state of crumble and there’s a lot of internal energy spent on trying to keep everything from falling apart.
Enter Miki St. John, abandoned in a city park then torn from the future he’d worked hard to achieve following the deaths of three young men he called brothers. His family. His foundation.
Of course losing Damien really dominated his loss. He’d found an anchor and a purpose but now, there was nothing there. Just pain and words and music he couldn’t stop from pouring out of him. There was no escaping who he’d become, who he’d grown into but there was no joy in it. Not wallowing per se but more of… it hurt to take his next breath and Miki seriously contemplated if that next breath was really worth it.
That’s where I started. A fractured, too-pretty young man who’d spent nearly all of his childhood as a victim of a horrific situation and then worked thru the struggles of becoming a damned good musician only for that to be lost. But he needed an anchor, not a person because that’s what the book would be about and he would have to go thru the trusting stages again but certainly an anchor that was as independent as he was.
Enter Dude.
The dog that Miki does NOT own. He just moved in and lives there now. Dude eventually became a friend but for Miki, the dog simply decided to be there. And in true Miki fashion, he accepted that and well, figured he might as well make sure the intruder got fed… and then possibly bathed once in a while. But it did take time for him to accept Dude as being a part of his life and a friend because… Mike has learned that once you love something, it will be taken from you and destroyed in front of your eyes. His heart couldn’t take much more of that. So Dude was an… eventual companion.
Dude felt otherwise. He spotted this broken human and said, Welp, that’s why I exist. And eventually slept next to Miki in bed, followed him on his rambles and more importantly, figured out the large, muscular Irish man who seemed to like playing with REALLY LARGE sticks, could fit into the emptiness Miki carried around with him.
But who is Miki as a person?
His behavior is shaped by circumstance and the gritty environment he was raised in but beneath the rough and snarling badger lies someone a bit different. Miki’s curious. About everything. In a lot of ways, he’s wary to show interest in something because that usually led to it being weaponized and used against him but now out in the world and essentially being free to do as he pleases, he can sink himself into his thirst for knowledge.
And music. Because honestly, Miki is pretty much drenched in a love for music. It takes him places. And he can take others with him by creating his own. Music is like an endless set of wings he can craft out of emotion and desire, allowing him to soar and weave through his emotions. The ultimate freedom no one can actually touch or steal from him.
He’s very protective of his inner self. To the point of being abrasive if someone gets too close. And of course Kane fully intended to get close. Miki fascinated him. A bit of a street rat with a heartbreakingly gorgeous face and sharp teeth / words skilled at keeping people at bay.
And there’s nothing Kane Morgan loves more than a challenge. He’s kind of like Brigid that way. He pursued Miki’s secretive tenderness. Opened Miki up to trusting him and then stroked at the raw, bleeding edges of Miki’s soul until Miki relaxed against him and learned it was okay too be held. That it was okay to be loved.
Especially since Kane proved he wasn’t going to go anywhere. Abandoning Miki never crossed Kane’s mind. Miki was a piece of his own soul, a tether to a glorious love he knew lurked beneath Miki’s diamond hard surface because once Miki loved someone, he loved fully.
And Kane wanted that love. Wanted to give back that love.
He also really loves the tender, gentle Miki he can unwrap out of the hard, foul-mouthed rock star the world saw.
Now without going too deeply into Miki’s soul, I wanted to create a very what you see is what you get kind of character. Yes, he has hidden depths but everything that he is or how he thinks actually is right on the surface. Miki’s a very much… Got a problem so finding the easiest, on-hand solution. Hungry? Uncooked ramen noodles chased with a can of root beer solves that problem so he can go back to gaming or writing music. He loves food. Loves eating different things but he’s not overly bothered to make sure he gets a meat and two veg on a plate.
Food focus is actually something imperative to Miki’s development because he was always food insecure. Meals were spotty while he was growing up and really the band couldn’t afford more than what was pretty much a college kid’s diet. He hoards things like ramen and other pantry items because it gives him security.
Just like buying a HUGE bag of dog food for Dude means he can provide for his furry best friend. Miki doesn’t trust that he has money and he acts accordingly. He’s not a big spender and will make do with what he’s got.
Then of course, he’s got a lot now… including, Kane, Damien, and of course, Dude….
And I’m going to actually do something different for this Of Characters and Things….
If you have a question about Miki, please leave it in the comments and I will try to answer them. It’s hard to write kind of blindly about Sinjun because well, it’s like describing a piece of your brain. 
But if there’s something specific you were wondering about, drop it in the comments so I can take a stab at it.
‘Nother Sip of Gin
Chinatown, San Francisco.
Rhys Ford 