N.A. Soleil
N.A. Soleil is the portmanteau pseudonym of the authors of the Metacosm Chronicles, N. and A. Soleil.
N. Soleil is a neurodivergent (autistic and ADHD) creative magpie and has the rare genetic connective tissue disorder Ehlers Danlos Syndrome and a myriad of fun comorbidities. She is the person who puts words to word processor, handles some of the more intricate parts of story (character interactions, dialogue), designs visuals ranging from illustrations to promo art and animations, social media person, and the person who handles the everyday business stuff.
N. is genderfluid and uses any pronoun.
A. Soleil is a sharp, charismatic combat veteran with severe complex PTSD, bipolar, and ADHD. The majority of the foundation of the Metacosm, its political and social structures, its planets and physics and pantheon, its species, its greater story arcs, and a good chunk of characters were A.'s contribution.
A is nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns.
However it must be said that everything is an accord among the Speakers. Nothing gets into the Metacosm until it is agreed upon by both parties, regardless of who brought forth the idea. N. and A. are equals in all things.
History
N. and A. are life partners and have been together since late 2006. They are 9 years and 9 days apart in age (with A. being older) and have two children.
They met on the MMORPG Dark Age of Camelot in approximately 2005 when A. was still enlisted. N. was dating someone at the time and A. was preparing to separate from the military, so their friendship remained sporadic and distant until after A's separation in early 2006. Around that time, N. became single, and the two became friends, then good friends, then inseparable. Eventually N. trapped A. in a dungeon (N. was playing a healer and A. a tank, so A. couldn't pull until N. said she was ready) by sitting down and refusing to move until she knew more about the person she'd been spending time with. This led to MSN messaging and eventually phone calls, then in late 2006 A. flew from Connecticut to California to meet N. in person. Both were nervous, but it turned out to be the best decision either had ever made.
N. flew to visit A. over the holidays, 2006, and by early 2007 A. was making plans to move to California. They moved into a shitty, overpriced apartment together, one of many they'd share together.
N. had always been a creator. She'd started writing her first novel at a very young age. (It and its kin were hilariously bad, unfinished, and will never see the light of day) She discovered anime at about age 12. It started with Pokémon, but Sailor Moon was what catalyzed a lifelong obsession. She threw herself into drawing, animating, and writing a script for an anime that starred a young psychic by the name of Redd. Being an undiagnosed autistic with an undiagnosed chronic illness made N.'s childhood isolated and paranoid. She was the penultimate 'weird kid' in a time before weird was considered cool, and not even academic enough to make up for it. A pariah to her peers and bafflingly unmotivated to adults, she turned to fantasy worlds to escape, and characters to feel what she couldn't express or process on her own.
By the time A. and N. were living together, she had multiple stories she was attempting to develop, and she was actively attempting to take a story she'd been writing since she was 13 and turn it into something that ... didn't sound like it was written by a 13 year old.
A. was supportive and would allow N. to verbally work through her thought processes often, and through her disastrous time at the Art Institute of California, San Diego.
In the oppressive heat of an El Cajon, California summer night with no A/C, N. was puzzling over a character she'd had in mind, and A. told her that it sounded like one of theirs.
The floodgates opened.
[TW: mention of abuse and trauma in the sentence below. This story is told with A.'s express permission.]
A. had devoured books during an abusive childhood. As many abused children do, they created a world in their mind to retreat to as an escape, using those books as a foundation. As they got older, as trauma heaped upon trauma before and within the military, their world was strengthened by much use.
[Continue here]
In their early 20s, A. lived a thousand lifetimes when they weren't in uniform: volunteering at a homeless shelter, practicing martial arts and teaching self defense to survivors of domestic abuse, traveling across the world, jumping out of planes and climbing mountains, hunting and surviving in the wild, and learning about anything and everything. Their world was tuned and refined by testing it on their D&D/GURPS groups, but they eventually came to the painful conclusion that they were not a writer, nor an artist, and didn't trust other people enough to involve them in the process with something so precious.
So they set it to the side and got down to the business of surviving, as a dream unfulfilled.
"I will never forget that moment. I got goosebumps. As we started talking about the character, I had a name and history but no motivation for him. A. had a motivation and a story arc, but no history nor name. We had eerily similar organizations (galactic police forces both named the Rangers -- I shit you not), headed by eccentric female Commanders (hello Chani), and eerily similar story arcs in mind for the main characters. So it was only natural that we move forward together." -- N.