Name: Lex
Race: Canine
Former Race: Grown man
Current Residence: Yuma, Arizona
Former Occupation: 2nd in charge of Starlight Designs galaxy design firm
Status: Banished to Earth for associations with Emma
Weirdest Part of Being a Dog: Not minding it so much
Character: Talk about going to the dogs (I know it’s a lame joke, but I couldn’t help myself). Like Emma, Lex gets a bit of a split personality in that there are two versions of him, as he has two distinct roles in two distinct places. Also like Emma, Lex was banished to Earth, and as we see him here, he’s a dog—a canine. But that’s not how he started out.
So while Lex is still Lex, this Lex–canine Lex–is really a different character to me, and I thought about him differently than I did his alter ego. He’s a dog on Earth, and he’s not particularly thrilled about it, but as is typical for Lex, he’s also not super worked up about it either. At least not as much as you might think. He’s kinda gotten used to it. At heart Lex is a good guy who wants to do his part, but he’d rather have fun and hang out than stress over the big issues. He just doesn’t have the burning ambitions Emma does.
That said, Lex has some secrets of his own. Emma suspects this, but doesn’t know this, and so it was fun to have Lex try and bait Emma now and then, always playing a little bit dumb. And the secrets Lex knows are far beyond even what Emma could imagine.
This Lex is also especially important in that he represents someone who takes what’s given to him and learns to adjust, which is in stark contrast to Emma. Because this Lex is a dog, he is physically limited compared to his alter ego, but he is no less important to a key sequence in Finders Keepers, as you’ll see when you read the book.
Illustration: All along I intended for Lex to have his own illustration, but then I had a change of heart, and wanted Emma and Lex together, since they really are linked so closely throughout the story. And then I changed my mind again. Because Lex appears in Finders Keepers in two distinct settings, situations and bodies—Earth Lex, that we see here, and Eternity Lex, I wanted stand-alone illustrations for a compare and contrast. Was it the right call? I’ll let you decide. And down the road I might ask Mike to do some combo illustrations anyway.
As for this illustration, I told Mike that I wanted Lex to look like he’d been posing for a picture for like an hour, and was way beyond annoyed. He just wants it done. After all, he’s a dog that used to be a grown man. How thrilled would you be? I think Lex’s quote at the bottom of the illustration—a direct line from Finders Keepers—says it all.
