Jordan Keerigan-Smith

==Place in the story:==
Jordan [aka Professor Keerigan-Smith, aka Jordy] is the secondary protagonist of the prequel series currently called Lynzee's Fountain. Suzanne is the view point character most of the time. Lynzee, the title character is Jordan's mother who has been an overbearing influence on his life. She is an artist who builds fountains, so the title refers to Suzanne thinking of him as Lynzee's primary artistic creation.
Apart from being primarily a love story about Jordan and Suzanne , this backstory [though not until at least the third book] explains first contact between Earth and HomeWorld, And between Earth and Paragangia. It also explains the beginnings of the Earth Alliance , Earth Station Mexico and some of the origin of Hell colony.
Jordan Keerigan-Smith will be mentioned occasionally in Destiny of Dreams by Jason Scott-Harris as the founder of the Alien Studies Program at KSU and the Father of Retro-Technnology. Lynzee is an ancestor of Gloria Scott, and part of her inspiration to become a professional artist. Gloria talking with Jason about these ancestors might have had something to do with his wanting to become a retro-technologist. Gloria would have supported this interest both because of her Idolizing Lynzee and because it would not lead him to Paragangian. [Gloria later regrets making him want to avoid learning about Paragangia]
Jordan and his family of Origin are Catholic.
==Physical Description:==
At the beginning of the story he is about 25, but small and thin. at a glance he seems to be about 12 [in meta-story, this aspect arises from him being authorially cloned from Jason Scott-Harris, see section below on character creation]. He has short curly red hair, and usually wears casual baggy clothes. He is hyperactive and fidgety, and usually sits on the floor or, if on a chair, sits with his feet up on the chair. He is short for a guy, probaby about 5 feet tall.[in later versions he is a little taller, he is the same height as Suzanne who is average height, so maybe about 5 foot three or so] Also like Jason, He resembles his mother rather than his father.
Jordan likes playing roles. Professor Keerigan-Smith is very different from Jordy. WHen he teaches, he straightens his hair and dyes it black, and he wears Glasses, and dresses very formally. He only deals with students if he is sitting behind his desk, so they can't see how short he is.
His appearance will change as more is written. In the HomeWorld series He is head of the Alien studies and RetrotechnologyDepartment. He would be middle aged at that time. I have not made any descriptions of him later in life.
==Life story and character etc==
Jordan is the father of the science of Retrotechnology, and the first head of the Alien Studies program at KSU . In this capacity he will closely associate, probably as a mentor, with Emily Hawthorn's father, Sherman Hawthorn. He will also be a sort of hero and role modal for Jason Scott-Harris. Jason would be proud to be related to him. [Gloria Scott is a descendant of Jordan's sister, and was inspired in her career path by the work of Lynzee Keerigan, Jordan's mother]
Together with Suzanne Patton, Jordan travels to Mexico seeking Lonnie aka Orlando Cartwright , a friend of Suzanne's who has gone missing. It turns out eventually that Lonnie's famiy is involved with Aliens from a planet called HomeWorld who have come to Earth seeking to learn the origin of their race.
When Suzanne meets Jordan she has just broken off her engagement with Jeramiah, and finds herself strongly attracted to Jordan. She is very ambivalant about him. He is basically a rich eccentric spoiled brat who comes from a very different background than her. She comes from a small town working-class fundamentalist Christian family. He proposes marriage, sincerely, the first day they meet, and she makes very clear that she is NOT interested in any romantic involvement with him. But she does agree to travel to Mexico with him, and takes him home to meet her family almost immediately. Her family, much to her annoyance, loves him and is immediately convinced she will marry him.
Jordan, having grown up traveling around Mexico with his mother and having been sexually abused as a child does not know how to have a normal relationship with a woman, but he sincerely loves Suzanne and is willing to learn and change. But it's hard for him to know the difference sometimes between role playing and actually changing. He's also got a very dependent relationship with his mother which makes it hard for him to build other relationships. His mother is jealous of Suzanne and tries to sabotage their relationship. His father Richard Smith wants her to marry him, even though she is not catholic, because Richard wants Jordan to experience the kind of normal family life Lynzee deprived him of. Richard believes Suzanne could give him that.
==Character Creation and Evolution==
This character evolved from a short story written for a graduate level Creative writing class at KSU . The story was called Snow Angel and was about Suzanne 's friendship with Lonnie. In the story, she is thinking about something she learned in Anthropology class. Being uncreative and in a hurry, I let her Anthropology professor [whom she hated] be Jason Scott-Harris . When this story went to workshop with the class, everybody hated it, feeling Suzanne was a boring character. One suggestion made for the rewrite was to let Suzanne have an affair with the anthropology professor she hated.
So, wanting to take full advantage of the suggestions of my peers, I decided to sit them down together in a cafe and see if anything happened. I quickly realized that Jason already having a pretty set character and history made it impossible for anything to happen between them, so I renamed the character, and changed his appearance and background just enough to make him not burdened with the existing story of Jason Scott-Harris. Once he was set free from his ancestry he fell 100% in love-at-first-sight with Suzanne, and the rest is history--or--well--about 4 novels worth of backstory, anyhow. I think I got a B minus or something on the short story which is the grad school equivalant of barely not failing.
Because of his...um..cloned? shall we say...origin, these two characters share many characteristics, Being 
short strange very young anthropology professors in the Alien Studies department at KSU with artist mothers and professor fathers. and having the first initial J and having a hiphenated last name. like identical twins, though, having the same genetic material does not cause them to have the same soul. They don't seem so much the same to me now that I have gotten to know them both individually. I'm curious how noticable the cloning would be to readers who didn't know their origin if I published both books
Jordan also bears a slight resemblance to and took inspiriation from my son Neil.
==pictures==
I've made several attempts to draw Jordan and Suzanne, but none I am happy with. there is also a pencil sketch of them walking hand in hand that I ahve not posted online yet, hopefully i will be able to find and post that one sometime.
Ruth6-1.jpg
2012 09 Jordan sketch wip.jpg
Jordan position sketch pencil by jadis.jpg
Jordan at cafe position color 1 copy.jpg
Category:Characters