1. Tell us about your favorite writing project/universe that you've worked with and why.

Stephanie: I'm going to cheat a little bit and do one from my personal projects and one from stuff I've worked on with Kath.
Personal Project: At the moment, Pale Moon-- it's been interesting to do research for it (yay supernatural beings!) and the characters have taken over my brain, so. Once I start working again on another project, my favorite will switch to that one, I'm sure.
With Kath: Karavan. We've done series work before, but Karavan is the first real time I've worked on the kind of thing that I love to read: sprawling epic with a huge cast of characters. Though Stealing Time was great, too-- time travel! royalty! alternate realities!-- and Jia's Charms started out as just a simple romance and then turned into an awesome worldbuilding thing . . .

Kath: Oh my goodness! I love them all but I think my most favorite is Karavan and that is because I have put so much time and thought into the settings and technology that I feel like it is a real place! Also, most of my favorite characters are in that universe too!

2. How many characters do you have? Do you prefer males or females?

Stephanie: About 384.
Actually, somewhere around fifty. As for men/women: a quick count taken from most of my projects gives me 31 women and 17 men, so there's the statistical answer. I know when I started writing I preferred writing women because of the whole "write what you know" thing, but as I've practiced more I've started to like writing for men, too.

Kath: I have lots and lots of characters! I definitely prefer writing for males. Why is that? Hmmmm. Maybe because I was such a tomboy as a kid and when we played pretend I was always 'cast' as the Cowboy Man, Car or truck driver, snowmobile racer guys. Most of my favorite book characters have been guys too: Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, Jaxom from Pern, Shea and Wil Ohlmsford from Shannara, Paul Atredes from Dune. I do write the occasional female, and I prefer her to be strong when I do. However, most of my male characters have a very significant flaw/weakness.

3. How do you come up with names, for characters (and for places if you're writing about fictional places)?

Stephanie: Once in a while a name will just pop into my head and I'll write it down to use for a character later, but most of the time I'll come up with a general character profile and then go to one of these two sites:
http://www.behindthename.com/
http://babynames.com/
Places is basically the same thing, though for those I'll a) switch some letters around and b) usually look in the phone book first.

Kath: Coming up with names is really fun. I use the cemetery a lot, but my favorite place for getting names is by watching the credits scroll by at the end of movies. Sometimes names just pop into my head. I also like to make changes to average names and make them un-normal. Sometimes I use favorite names. ie: Finn, Kev (from Kevin) Wil.

4. Tell us about one of your first stories/characters!

Stephanie: Okay, this is embarrassing, but what the hey.
My first project was a book called Sisters, about a family with-- I think it was five-- girls, and following them as they grew up. I was about fourteen or so when I started the thing, so I had no concept of how to handle that many characters. I think the main differentiating factor between them was hair color. And it had two sequels, Cousins and Family, about the sisters' children and then about everybody as adults.
The whole thing was a hot mess, but the books were also about 100 pages each, so they did get me into the habit of starting things of at least novella length and actually finishing them.
They were also my introduction to cybercasting, except instead of mentally casting actors and actresses in the parts, I went through my stacks of magazines and cut out pictures of models from ads and made 'covers' for each book.
I think I still have them in my closet somewhere.

Kath: Well, back in third grade I wrote a story about martians landing on earth . . . but seriously, after leaving a full-time job to stay home with my kids (about 18 years ago) I started writing a young adult novel. I followed that with two or three intermediate stories and then turned to my favorite genre: Sci-fi/Fantasy. My most memorable characters to date have got to be Finnian Kerr and Simon LaCroix.

5. By age, who is your youngest character? Oldest? How about “youngest” and “oldest” in terms of when you created them?

Stephanie: Youngest character-- Anori from Karavan. She's 5.
Oldest-- Elizabeth from In the Darkness Find Me, who's over 100.
As for when I created them:
Youngest-- Anybody from Pale Moon, since it's my latest project.
Oldest-- Stace from the We Were Strangers series; I came up with her in 1999. ((holy crow I cannot believe it's been eleven years))

Kath: I've done a few younger characters-- 5, 8, 10. A few teenagers, too. Most of my characters fall in the 20 to 40 age range.

6. Where are you most comfortable writing? At what time of day? Computer or good ol' pen and paper?

Stephanie: Depends on what type of writing I'm doing. If I'm writing notes on an upcoming book, then it's pen and paper, and most comfortable in the car. We'll go on drives out in the country once in a while and look at the scenery and take pictures of decaying barns and I'll scribble notes.
If I'm actually writing the book, or editing, then in front of the computer.
As for time of day-- late night or very early morning. That way it's before anyone else gets up or after everyone else has gone to bed, and I can concentrate on the book.

Kath: I'm most comfortable writing on my computer. I will take out a notebook and pen if I have no other option, but when I do that it's never real writing, mostly just getting down the gist which I fill in later on the desktop. I prefer to write when I am completely alone. Which is why I haven't been able to do much writing at all the past few years. Early morning till about 10 am is the perfect time. I used to like late night writing, but in my old age I'm having a hard time staying up past 9.

7. Do you listen to music while you write? What kind? Are there any songs you like to relate/apply to your characters?

Stephanie: We could be here a while. ;-)
I most always listen to music when I write, usually the radio (yay Pandora). There are tons of songs I associate with my characters, either because I was listening to the soundtrack nonstop while working on it-- which is why the Wicked soundtrack will always remind me of Stealing Time-- or because the lyrics fit certain characters, even if I haven't written those characters yet. ((haven't started my Greek mythology books yet, for instance, but April March's song "Chick Habit"? Zeus.)) Lyrics are usually the way I pick songs for characters/books; Kath can confirm that I'm forever sending her lyrics with "How perfect is this for so-and-so" notes.
But sometimes the lyrics won't really matter; the tune of the song just fits the character. Can't really explain that one, but it happens a lot: Sixpence None the Richer's "There She Goes" is always going to be Stace's theme to me; Polyphonic Spree's "Light and Day" is Jia; Sweetwater's "In a Rainbow" is Thiare; Foo Fighters' "Learn to Fly" is Logan.
Some characters have a ton of songs I associate with them, others have none. I can't really come up with a song to associate with Simon. Few songs seem to have a "Right now I can tolerate you so I might let you live. Maybe." theme. Maybe Voltaire's "When You're Evil".
One of these days I really need to make novel playlists.

Kath: I can't write with music. I have to have total silence. That's not to say that I don't hear songs that remind me of my characters. I do quite often!

8. What's your favorite genre to write? To read?

Stephanie: To write: Different kinds of fantasy-- Sci-fi fantasy (Karavan, Stealing Time); Urban fantasy (Pale Moon); Traditional fantasy (Memories of Her Singing); Romantic fantasy (Jia's Charms). Also YA (Eight Ruby Slippers for Charlotte) and horror (In the Darkness Find Me).
To read: Horror novels and short stories, fantasy, some true crime.

Kath: Same answer both questions: sci-fi/fantasy, with Young Adult a close second. My least favorite genres are Biographies and mysteries.

9. How do you get ideas for your characters? Describe the process of creating them.

Stephanie: I don't really have a set process . . . sometimes a story idea will come to me and then the characters follow, and other times it'll be the character first and I'll have that person in mind for months/years before I find a story that fits them.
I'll usually use a character sheet at some point-- full name, age, physical appearance, favorite childhood memory, most embarrassing childhood memory, that kind of thing. There are some minor characters I don't know all these things about, of course, but if the character's a main one and especially if I write for them in more than one book, I know plenty about them that might not ever make it into a novel.

Kath: I usually start with the setting and then populate it, coming up with conflicts that take the characters out of their comfort zone. Brainstorming with my writing partner is definitely part of the process, too.

10. What are some really weird situations your characters have been in? Everything from serious canon scenes to meme questions counts!

Stephanie: Well, I've got an upcoming scene where a guy has to deal with aliens crash-landing in his backyard. Stace got chased around by a mutant wasp-thing and got trapped in a flour bin (the perils of only being 4 inches tall). Rohan tries to go back in time one hour and ends up skipping decades. Sera goes on a walk on a hiking trail and ends up traveling to another dimension.
I'm sure there are more, but a lot of these things don't really stand out to me because even though they're objectively weird, they make perfect sense in the context of the story.

Kath: Well, Steph has put them into some really interesting AU situations but, seriously now, Finn falling through a hole in a mountain and breaking his leg . . . Simon using seal bladders to get himself off a deserted island, Reeza befriending a wolf who's really a man, Trader and Anabel meeting a man who talks to himself at the bottom of the ocean . . . I could go on and on.

11. Who is your favorite character to write? Least favorite?

Stephanie: I think my favorite character to write is Maia from Stealing Time-- devoted to her cause, brave to the point of being foolhardy, perverted sense of humor, and a deep-down romantic even if she'd never admit as much. She's great to write for.
Least favorite would be a tie between Kr'Enza from the Karavan series and Jeryl from Stealing Time. I think (hope) I've done enough research into rapists/abusers to get the characters down realistically, but it's still getting into a really creepy headspace.

Kath: Trader is my favorite character to write. I also love and hate to write for Simon.
I don't have a least favorite per se. I have loved to write for all my characters and have not liked writing for all my characters. The not liking comes from the spots where I don't really have a plan and the writing feels like it is not going anywhere or accomplishing anything. When the writing is right on and inspired, there is no better feeling than that character bursting from the end of my fingertips!

12. In what story did you feel you did the best job of worldbuilding? Any side-notes on it you'd like to share?

Stephanie: Well, with Karavan most of it takes place on a ship, so in a weird way it doesn't seem as much like worldbuilding to me, because we have so many cultures interacting there with some focus on each instead of strong focus on one. With the We Were Strangers series I regret not going into as much detail with a lot of things (I have so much nostalgic love for that series, but it was started when I was seventeen and there are things I'd do differently now).
To me it's tied between Stealing Time and Jia's Charms-- the former because of the jumping between the past and the future and showing how everything ties in together, and the differences between the Bihlan and the Niveti that cause the conflicts in the book; the latter because of the world, the animal and plant life and how people there have adapted.
So worldbuilding in a cultural/religious sense, Stealing Time. In terms of the world itself, Jia's Charms.

Kath: That would be Trader and Anabel's story, Karavan. Details, details, details and brainstorming went into creating a believable universe. We had to come up with lots of fixes; ie, if they are all from different planets, how do they understand each other's language? Is there a universal language? How about personal translators for everyone? That leads to characters who program translators. How can one person know that many languages? That leads to 'information implants' and memory enhancements, etc. etc.

14. How do you map out locations, if needed?

Stephanie: I map out locations in my head-- I have a general idea where various places/houses are in relation to each other, and if it's a really large area I'll write out notes describing what goes where. Kath is awesome with this, though, she'll actually draw out continent and sometimes city maps.

Kath: I'm very visual. Having photos/paintings of characters on my wall in front of me help progress the movie in my head that the story is making. I also draw maps, and diagrams of ship layouts, etc. It helps me to know what I am writing about; I can move the characters about in a confident manner when I 'know' where they are.

15. Tell us about a writer you admire, whether professional or not!

Stephanie: There are plenty-- my cowriter Kath is of course one of them. I've worked with her for over ten years now, and someday I hope to be as good at descriptive writing as she is. She consistently comes up with awesome story ideas, and she helps me to pause and think when I'm too far into Tasmanian Devil mode to remember that the scenario I've come up with in Chapter Thirteen completely contradicts something I set up in Chapter Two.
Two of my influences growing up were Stephen King and Dean Koontz-- King's short story "The Last Rung on the Ladder" is still one of my favorite pieces ever, and I love a lot of Koontz's dialogue (hooray for snarky banter). Several writers on my LiveJournal friends-list-- apocalypsos posts some fascinating-looking excerpts and I can't wait to read a full book; nilchance can take the weirdest sounding ideas ever and make them work because her worldbuilding is just that good; I haven't had a chance to read any of jimhines's stuff yet but if his books are anything like his LJ writing style, I will love them.
I know there are people I'm leaving out because my brain is a sieve.

Kath: Hmmm. Several. Terry Brooks for the hook at the end of every chapter that makes you keep going, and the description at the beginning of every chapter that puts you right there in the story with his characters. Anne McCaffrey and Frank Herbert for creating the most realistic worlds I have ever visited. Dean Koontz for his amazing use and neverending supply of similes.

16. Do you write romantic relationships? How do you do with those, and how “far” are you willing to go in your writing?

Stephanie: I think a better question would be, when do I not write romantic relationships. I don't think there's a book I've worked on yet that didn't feature a romance of some kind. Whether it's in the background or not depends on the story, but there's always something there. Because I'm a sap.
How far I'm willing to go depends on the characters. Va'Heta and Thiare from Karavan are more of a fade-to-black pair, while Xavierre and Maia from Stealing Time are a "Hi, you're trying to focus on plot when you really should be writing porn about us instead" couple.

Kath: The more I write and get to know a character the more real they become to me. Character-based stories are about relationships, how they succeed and how they fail. I want them to be real to the reader, too. I want them to cry when they cry and be happy when they are happy. Emotional romance is not hard for me to write. Sometimes the physical can be. Sometimes it's just okay to leave it to the reader's imagination.

17. Favorite protagonist and why!

Stephanie: At the moment, we have a tie-- very different characters, from different series, but equally awesome to me:
1) Rachel, from Jia's Charms and its sequel. She's the leader of a colony on a severed world, who unexpectedly has to deal with an influx of people who were not expecting to have to live in an area with no indoor plumbing and creepy predators hanging around. She's fair, independent, and dotes on her younger sister (though in true sibling fashion, she shows that mainly through teasing and sarcasm).
2) Thiare, from the Karavan series. She doesn't really fit in with the others-- most of them are hardened warriors or at least familiar with fighting and used to traveling. She's just out of school and while her knowledge makes her a valuable asset, her lack of real world experience and general naivete can make her a liability. Especially when some of the stray animals she insists on taking in would probably eat half the crew if given a chance.

Kath: Finn, because he is just a down-on-his-luck guy that you want to see succeed. Plus, he's pretty hot.
And Trader. Who can be both protagonist and antagonist!

18. Favorite antagonist and why!

Stephanie: Probably Emari from the Karavan series-- she's very smart, and works within the system, exploiting it to reach her goals. She's overconfident and condescending and she drives most of my other characters up a wall. Those are some fun interactions to write.
She's my favorite of the pure antagonists; if we got into the antagonist/protagonist category, then it'd definitely be Simon from We Were Strangers.

Kath: Simon LaCroix, because he can be so mean and nasty, but he's got a weakness there too.
Sulis, because he is so complex and crazy that I don't always know what he's going to do!

19. Favorite minor that decided to shove himself into the spotlight and why!

Stephanie: Well, there are two, and they're both in the Karavan series.
Va'Heta was originally going to be a small character, quite possibly a villain, and get killed off early on. Didn't work out that way; once I started writing him it became obvious he wasn't a villain and I was too curious about where else he'd go to kill him in the first book.
Ki'Rana is a childhood friend of his, who first showed up in just a one-line reference he made about how someone else on board reminded him of her. I had it in my mind that at the time he was making the comment, she was already dead. Then I sat down and wrote her death scene and . . . well, she refused to die. Good thing, too, because she's one of my favorite characters now.

Kath: Sulis, from Karavan, who took on a life of his own.

20. What are your favorite character interactions to write?

Stephanie: I love to write flirting. Which is funny to me because I'm horrible at it in real life. But it's always so much fun to write, whether it's as characters who flirt as automatically as they breathe or ones who are awkwardly trying to figure out what they're doing.
On the other end of the spectrum, I also like fight scenes. It's interesting to me to see how characters'll react in a fight; who'll go right for the throat and who'll hide under a desk, and who'll surprise you by having the exact opposite reaction from what you'd expect.

Kath: I loved writing Trader and Anabel, and Trader and Ki'Rana. With Anabel because that's where the story first started, and we thought they would be together-- until they developed minds of their own! And with Ki'Rana because they need each other so badly whether they realize it or not. Finn and Stace, especially in the beginning of their relationship.

21. Do any of your characters have children? How well do you write them?

Stephanie: Several of my characters have kids-- Lauren has Ivy and Kae; Rick has Kaveri; Geneva has Ian; Elspeth has Abigail; Maia has Darshana; Durai has Mairi. I think I write the younger kids pretty well-- in the ones Kath and I work on together, she's helped me with the older kids because so far I've spent a lot of time around kids from infancy to age 2.

Kath: I have had a lot of experience with kids and feel like I write them realistically.

22. Tell us about one scene between your characters that you've never written or told anyone about before! Serious or not.

Stephanie: Well, there is the fun little conversation where Stace and Simon discuss the finer points of attack strategy.
And I've got a scene in mind in the Pale Moon universe where an agoraphobic alien gets into a heated argument with her spaceship.
I don't know; it's easy to think of stuff I haven't written but a lot harder to remember scenes that I haven't discussed with somebody.

Kath: Oh my. Really? Well, remember that romance question a while back? I've written a few scenes over the years where there is nothing left to the imagination.

23. How long does it usually take you to complete an entire story—from planning to writing to posting (if you post your work)?

Stephanie: It so, so varies. Redemption is a story that's existed in my head in one way or another for about six years, and I'm only now really figuring out how it's going to work. In the Darkness Find Me, on the other hand, was probably a year or less? I had a dream about one of the main scenes in it, woke up and wrote it down, and the rest of the novel followed quickly-- helped that it was more a novella than a novel.
I've got an alternate-reality series planned, but it'll be a while before I start on that, and while I've started on Pale Moon it might be a little bit before the book's ready, largely because of time. And I'm trying to get more organized with which project I'm working on when, so that I can get books put out probably around once a year or so instead of having fifty pages done on four different projects.

Kath: A story is never really finished. It took me about 15 years to complete my YA novel, The Sarah Stone, and even now, with it in print, I see things that I would change or add. Steph and I have stories we've been working on for years.

24. How willing are you to kill your characters if the plot so demands it? What's the most interesting way you've killed someone?

Stephanie: I'm willing to kill a character if I think it's necessary to the plot. To me, 'necessary to plot' means that it's unrealistic for a large group of characters to go through a situation like the one I've got them in with all of them making it out unscathed. Or if a character's in a seriously bad spot and there's no way to get them out of it and it's either kill them or come up with a deux ex machina, then they're toast.
I do specifically work on not killing one character just in order to motivate another. I hate the whole 'fridging' thing and when LOST started to do it is when I had to stop watching. And while I know that sometimes crappy, unexpected things happen in real life fights, I'm not much for Death As Gritty Shock Value either.
It also partly depends on the universe I've got it set in. There'll probably be more death in the Pale Moon universe, with its vampires, zombies, werewolves, banshees, and all the accompanying inter-group battles than there was in the We Were Strangers universe, which was at heart a kids-style fantasy story.
As for interesting ways to kill someone: I did have someone attacked by a Demonic Creepy Thing and then thrown out a window in In the Darkness Find Me.

Kath: Hard hard hard question! I usually start out with a plan for a character to die and the more I write and get to know them, the more I want to redeem or save them. Sometimes it would be for the best to kill them off and I'd like to say, yes, easily done. Even if I'd be lying. Of course the saving grace is that there is always the Alternate Universe. No character has to ever die!

25. Do any of your characters have pets? Tell us about them.

Stephanie: Yep! Connor from Redemption has a cat named Charlie. Connor adopted him when he was an adult cat, and he has issues from a previous owner. He somewhat tolerates Connor, but if anyone else comes into the house, their ankles are fair game.
Thiare from Karavan has three kittens. In her universe, strays at space ports are a huge problem; people will make impulse purchases while visiting a planet and then leave the new pet behind when they realize how much work it is, or they'll dump litters because they figure with so many people passing through, someone will take them in. That 'someone' would always be Thiare if she had the time and room.
Ivy from Jia's Charms has a couple of viatars-- picture a pudgy flying squirrel without the jumping ability and about twenty times more laziness.
Abigail from Pale Moon has a giant squirrel (it's a long story).
And I just realized that out of the common domestic pets, none of my characters have a dog. I should rectify that. I like dogs, but I've always had cats and I'm much more familiar with their brand of oddball aloof affection.

Kath: Ivy had a pet, but it's hard to write for them because I tend to forget to keep them in the storyline. Reeza had a pet who died, and she replaced him with a pet who became her boyfriend (that's a long story, too). I would like to write more interaction with them.

26. Let's talk art! Do you draw your characters? Do others draw them? Pick one of your OCs and post your favorite pictures!

Stephanie: I have tried to draw my characters. Results-- sooooo not pretty. So now I pay other actually talented people to draw them!

Amelia and Evan, from In the Darkness Find Me.
Illustration by Mandy Roberts.
I love this picture because she captured the tone of the scene so well. Once I get my office done, my copy of this one is going front and center on my desk.

Reeza, from Karavan.
Drawn by Warsheep Productions.
The pose and the look on her face are fantastic; when I think of Reeza, this is the image that comes to mind.

Stace, from We Were Strangers.
Drawn by Sheena Kristen Sy.
I adore Sheena's style, very simple and cute and I think it worked really well for this character.

The women of the Karavan series: Thiare (near the top, violet skin and blue hair); Reeza (very top, blond); Serra (opposite from Thiare, holding the knife); Ki'Rana (braided hair, Reeza's hand on her shoulder); Anabel (dark hair, blue uniform); Maiza (shades of blue); Jaetina (red tunic).
Drawn by Mandy Roberts, and then Kath tried her hand at coloring it.
This is one of my favorites because it has half the cast in it; it's impossible for me to look at it and not feel some inspiration to work on the books.

Kath: Yes yes yes! I have to have pictures of my characters. If I were rich I would have spent soooooo much money. I would love to see one of our stories as a graphic novel. That's my ultimate dream.

27. Along similar lines, do appearances play a big role in your stories? Tell us about them, or if not, how you go about designing your characters.

Stephanie: Looking at my character designs for non-humans, I seem to really like the cool colors on the spectrum-- Ki'Rana's hair has green streaks; Maiza's skin is blue; Thiare has violet skin and blue hair; Lyric's skin is pale green. I need to create a character with red or orange skin somewhere in here.
Though I have recently realized that I fell into the whole Least Common Skin Tone trope (obligatory warning for TV Tropes and getting trapped in it for days, etc.). Will be rectifying that.
It depends on the story, as to whether appearances play a big role. In my book Memories of Her Singing, Qinvara is a dimension-traveler with fully black eyes; her eyes are brought up more than once because they're an extreme oddity in most any world she goes to and she has to take measures to hide them. I'll toss in short descriptors sometimes-- mostly hair and eye color, height-- but I don't usually go for the paragraph-long elaboration on exactly what someone looks like and what they're wearing.
How I design them: I'll generally get a feel for a character's 'voice' first and their appearance follows after that. And some of it is "this would look really cool when I ask Mandy to draw it". :-)

Kath: I like to know exactly what my characters look like. Sometimes I know what they look like before I start writing for them. Others take a little bit longer to get to know before I can give them a face. But yes, appearances are important, as are what they are wearing . . . their haircuts, their style of clothing. Small details like bracelets, rings, body piercings. I want to know everything about my characters right down to what kind of bed they sleep in to where they hang their clothes when they take them off.

28. Have you ever written a character with physical or mental disabilities? Describe them, and if there's nothing major to speak of, tell us a few smaller ones.

Stephanie: Haven't done it; it's not something I have personal experience with and I'm not quite confident enough in the research I've done to tackle it yet. I expect my comfort level with it will change soon, and then so will my answer to this question.
I'm not sure if the term for them is really 'disabilities', but Ki'Rana from Karavan is working through a pretty bad case of PTSD, and Lauren from Jia's Charms has depression.

Kath: I like my characters to be troubled. Psychic, disturbed, yes, I've done a few of those.

29. How often do you think about writing? Ever come across something IRL that reminds you of your story/characters?

Stephanie: Constantly. I'm rarely without a notebook; I'd carry one to class in high school and college, and now I carry one in my purse. When I worked at the donut shop, I'd use Post-It notes when we had a lull. Sometimes I'll see a news story that inspires an idea, and sometimes I'll see a person who really looks like one of my characters. Once a young woman came into the donut shop-- probably 5'11 or so, angular face, auburn hair, and she looked so much like I imagined Kath's character Onnoree that I was tempted to ask her to pose for a portrait photo. :-)

Kath: I think about writing every day, especially when I am not writing. Sometimes real life gives me ideas for stories but most of my ideas come from brainstorming with my writing partner.

30. Who is your most unlikely (yet still realistic) couple that you have NOT written?

Stephanie: I really had to think about this one. The 'have not written' part is where I tripped up, because I'll write little AU fanfiction stories (yes, I write fanfiction for my own work; I am that much of a dork) with different pairings.
The couple would probably have to be Thiare/Kynn, from Karavan.
Thiare has a thing for trying to 'rescue' people, hence her infatuation with Trader. But at the end of the day she needs somebody who'll actually talk to her and be there for her (Trader's whole strong-and-silent-type thing would get old for her fast). And Kynn could definitely do with someone else to help him keep his optimism up on days when the job gets to him.
Why it's unlikely-- nobody can take that much hyperactivity/cheerfulness in one couple. The rest of the crew would kill them in self-defense the moment they announced they were dating. ;-)

Kath: Ha! I think that would probably be Reeza and Trader.