I woke up Wednesday morning with Troll on my mind. He's the hero in The Troll Bridge from The Mammoth Book of Time Travel Romance.
Yes, I'm going to riff about characters again. They're why I write and I live with them in my head for months and not just the months while I'm writing their story. They come in before that, spend time telling me who they are and letting me see who they are, and they're with me while I write their proposal. They stick with me while I wait to find out if their story sold and sometimes this can take months or more. Then there's writing the book and they stay after I'm done to help me through revisions and copy edits and galleys. So even if a story sells immediately, I'm still living with the heroes and heroines from my books for about a year--minimum.
I don't mind. I love my imaginary people and I miss them when they leave. It's part of the reason why I reread my own books. I want to visit with them again. It's rarer for a character who's left to come back on their own and that's part of the reason why I was so pleasantly surprised by Troll showing up.
But I digressed. Again. Sorry. Anyway, Wednesday morning, Troll came in. I love Troll. Love him! He's been around since I was writing Eternal Nights back in 2005, and when I had a chance to write the Time Travel, I knew I was going to the future (Well, duh, I don't have a historical voice and I don't read many historicals) and writing his story.
It was strange. The Troll Bridge is like an abbreviated version of his full book. Even as I wrote it, I knew I could do a full-length, 100,000 word story for him and Lia. But his story comes after the stories for Flare, Gravedigger, and the Z Man and I'd have to find time to do those first. Time I don't have.
Troll, though, is major yummy. Not just because he's gorgeous--I wish there were more pictures online of multi, multi, multicultural men because I'd love to find who looks like him to share--but because he's a genuinely good guy. He's close to his family despite being stationed on Jarved Nine and has respect and affection for his parents and grandparents. He also has some psychic abilities that he hides, but he's nowhere near as good as his grandmother. She used to do readings in New Orleans.
Since I already have a list of things to write that's half a dozen stories long (that's counting trilogy/series ideas as one and not three or more), I know Troll wasn't visiting because I'll be writing him again. That allowed me to spend the day just enjoying him, like an old friend who unexpectedly came to visit.
