Caitlin Vanderkeller

    “Being born beautiful and gifted is no excuse for mediocrity.”
    She’s smart, gorgeous, educated and destined--or at least driven--for the Big Time. So why is her personal life in the toilet and her career thwarted by a walk-on weirdo like this damn Wiley person? Shuffled off her career track to edit the local weekly paper as part of a take-over scam, she joins forces with the only other person who doesn't want her to work there: the previous editor, Rollie Moon.


Roland Moon

    “I think I've had about as much pleasure as I can stand.”
    Being a dedicated, crusading editor of the weekly pried Rollie away from his Berkeley/surfer roots: getting fired in the power grab also shook him loose from his girlfriend, home and income. But brings him contact with Caitlin, with whom he cooks up a scheme to try to save the paper from itself and reverse on the manipulators upstairs. Too bad he's not into blondes or media faces.


Wiley

    “ I'm not a proponent of drugs, violence and sicko sex. A product perhaps, but not a proponent.”
    The monkeywrench in the ointment, Wiley is sort of a professional lowlife--but with a gift for the well-turned scathe. He creeps onto television, laterals to a newspaper column, seduces the women, and turns the setup on its ear. Nobody knows where he came from, and sure as hell don't know where he's going. But most agree: he's got to be stopped.


Jammi Jamison

    “What’s to think about? I’m a token weather fox in a third-tier media market.”
    Jammi may not be the brightest girl ever to breach the walls of fame armed with nothing but raw ambition, a cute smile, and a highly-tuned, drool-friendly, aftermarket equipped body...but she knows what she wants and has the picture. She’s more complex than she would appear beneath the steely curves and airbrushed tan: largely due to a clamoring briarpatch of neuroses. She’s a natural target for Wiley’s lust, but vaults up to a bigger prize: a zillionaire owner. Which is when things start getting really weird for her.


J. Danforth Scorment IV

    “And speaking of a hard one, Honey-poon, what have we here?”
     The obese zillionaire who nominally owns the station that takes over the paper, "Dan The Fourth" is aging disgracefully. A huge pile of guts with nasty tastes, he moves writers around like pawns while being manipulated by others with more clout, liquid assets and sex appeal. He's not a bright guy, but even he would admit marrying Jammi was a major mistake.


Hollis Ovarón

      “Lead? I can barely manage to manage.”
      A nitwit fundamentalist who inherited The Week but has no idea how to keep from destroying it, Ovarón is fair game for staff revolts, hostile take-overs, and stock hustles. Edged out by the new owners, he concentrates on saving souls in Latin America while driving his staff nuts back home. "The Eggman" as his staff call him, would be helpless but for the intervention of his ballsier partner, "The Walrus."


Karin "Casey" Chones

      “Don’t mess with somebody who can emasculate you in print just by hitting a keystroke.”
       “Casey” because she’s the editor you need when your story is a train wreck, Chones is the only one on the paper staff who doesn’t want to get rid of Wiley. Worse, she wants to save him from himself. Tough behind the boards, but a softie to the depths of her way-too-single heart, Casey is also one character who follows Wiley into the depths of his normal habitat: the dingy dive known as The Mimosa Club.


Stevenson "Boo" Yao

      “Somebody has to count the beans or nobody gets to make the dip.”
      More than a gimlet-eyed accountant, Yao is the right arm and scepter of the dimly perceptible corporate hierarchy that owns the station. He revels in his “hatchet man” image, puts on a Tong dialect in meetings with station management. On the phone to corporate, he speaks impeccable MBA. The major catalyst in the paper's cataclysm, Yao mops everybody in sight while squinting through his Tojo glasses. But will he meet his match in a bouncy weathergirl and jaded gay hedonist?


Mimosa Club Regulars

      "How would you like to go where everyone knows your alias?"
      Wherever else he may swindle his way into, Wiley’s real habitat is this toxic old bar. Caitlin might describe him as a step away from street trash, but Mimosa Club denizens have no such pretensions. A “Cheers” for underclass losers and unstable criminal elements kept in check with brute force by the harried bartender Jerome, the Mimosa is Wiley’s support group, dysfunctional family, and reality check.