The Accidental Hero: How Rusty Became Ian

I’ve been thinking about Rusty this week—specifically about his name and his role in the Paladin League series.

When I wrote book two, I needed a throwaway character. Someone who didn’t quite fit on the covert ops team. I didn’t bother naming him. He wasn’t meant to matter. He was simply The New Guy.

Book three changed that. I needed someone to play bodyguard to Cat and Griff alongside Deck, and The New Guy needed a name. He became Rusty—still a background presence, still not intended to be important.

He showed up again in book four. Through the Musketeers section of the Paladin League, he bounced between screw‑up and unexpected savior. He was never meant to be a hero. He was there for plot reasons. Nothing more.

And then Deck insisted he had a story.

That’s when the Lost Treasure section of the Paladin League came into existence. My original plan was a four‑book subset: Deck, Lurch, Rusty, and Archer. But Rusty needed more redemption than two books could handle, and the plot to reach the arms dealer was too big to wrap up this quickly.

This was the era when Rusty’s real name was Zack. I labeled spreadsheets with it. OneNote pages. File folders. Everything said Zack.

Right up until I wrote the line where Ellis called him Ian.

I’ve learned never to argue with my characters about their names. I’ve tried. I’ve lost every time. I have a fair number of vowel names because when I expanded the Lost Treasure arc to six books, I ended up with Oz, Ayla, and Iona joining Archer, Ian, and Ellis. I sighed and went with it.

Now it’s nearly time to actually write Ian (AKA Rusty, AKA The New Guy), and I’m nervous.

Have I redeemed him enough to be a hero?

Ian is earnest. Determined. He wants so badly to do the right thing. And I’ve paired him with a heroine I don’t normally write—someone naive, green, not savvy. The exact opposite of Iona, who can take care of herself.

Ellis scares me to write because she’s a delicate balancing act. I don’t want her to come across as Too Stupid To Live, but her naivety and her determination to break free from her ivory‑tower life are real driving forces for her.

Ian is ready. Ellis is ready. I just hope I’m ready for them.

 

Not Intuitive

I've talked about the juniper removal and replacement with sod, but I'm not sure I mentioned watering this new sod. That's about to change.

The controller I have for my sprinkler system feels much more complicated (to me) than the one I had at my house in Minnesota. That was felt easy and straightforward. This one? Not so much.

I've relied on other people to set it for me. The landscaper. My brother. But my yard is just a muddy, sodden mess and I didn't understand why.

I also didn't understand how my water bill could be as ridiculous as it was.

Then I tried to adjust the time on the controller myself, made everything worse with zones running twice, and I was like what is going on?

Finally, on Saturday, I did a search for the manufacturer/controller names. Found a YouTube video that the company created about how to program the controller. It was eye opening to say the least. What I thought were Zones were program numbers.

PROGRAM NUMBERS!

My sprinkler was running THREE times. Every day.

When the landscaper had it scheduled to run for an hour for the new sod, it was running for three hours.

I didn't notice this because I was sleeping while most of the running was happening, but when I adjusted the times, it started running while I was awake and that's when I noticed it was going off twice. Actually, it was still going off three times, but I wasn't up for the first one.

With the YouTube video fresh in my mind, I went to the controller and turned off programs 2 and 3. Verified that program 1 was hitting all three zones and turned it to run.

Of course, I'm going to continue to monitor the situation to make sure I did it right, but I'm hoping this takes care of how wet and muddy my yard is. The water bill is still going to be outrageous this month, but hopefully that goes down next month.

What a mess. 

Junipers: Post Script Part 2

Please go back and read part one if you haven't already. This is part two of the saga.

I flip the lever, get hit in the face with a burst of water from the sprinkler, and try to run to avoid taking another slam of water. Unfortunately, I didn't take a couple of things into consideration.

One: I'm on an incline. The yard goes up where I'm standing which (I guess) is why the original owner had junipers there instead of sod to begin with.

Two: The ground is very uneven.

Instead of agilely running away from the water like I planned, I literally face plant on my first step. Thank God for my privacy fence so none of my neighbors got to see that inelegant landing.

Now the real fun begins. My Apple Watch is pinging an "SOS: Hard Fall Detected" message and wants to call for help!

NO! NO! NO!

I don't need any help. I'm fine. Muddy. Wet from the sprinkler. But fine.

And I can't get that stupid thing to stop. I'm to the point where I'm trying to Google how to turn that damn thing off before it calls 9-1-1.

It took (what felt like) forever, but I finally got it to stop.

Now, I'm plotting because the last thing I want is a repeat of this experience. I debate the old hoses, the heavy rubber ones stored in my garage, but I really don't want to lug them around. The answer is clearly to buy a second 100 foot expandable hose because the two of them attached to each other should solve the issue.

From what I read, there are other issues with water pressure and stuff, but I'll take that trade off to prevent another night of getting soaked with water, Apple Watch freaking out about a little face plant, and doing a load of (unexpected) laundry because everything I'm wearing is covered in mud.

This HOPEFULLY concludes the story of the junipers, but I haven't used my second section of hose yet.

Junipers: Post Script

The new section of sod (of course) needs more watering than the sod that's been in for a while. Also, water in Georgia is ridiculously expensive! I literally pay more for one month of watering x3.5 than I do for three months of watering when I lived in Minnesota.

But the landscaper took the sprinkling time down to half an hour from an hour (AN HOUR! GAH!) and told me to sprinkle the new sod more.

So I bought a lightweight, 100 foot house. It's one of those expandable ones. I do have rubber hoses, but they're so heavy and it's hard to haul them around.

And this is the beginning of the saga.

First, I nearly bought a fifty-foot hose because surely I wouldn't need a full 100 feet. But I most definitely did need 100 feet. I wish I'd known what expandable hoses are like before I bought the hose. Alas, I figured 100 feet is 100 feet. I do not believe this to be true. I believe it is only 100 feet while the water is running through it.

Which leads me to point two. Without water running through the hose, making it expand, it does not reach the new sod and I was unable to position the sprinkler I also bought. So I had to turn the lever at the head of the hose to the off position, turn on the water, and then, after the hose expanded, position it.

Point three. After getting the sprinkler positioned, I had to turn that lever at the head of the hose back on. We all know what happened then, right?

Water hit me in the face.

But wait! There's More! Stay tuned for Part 2. 

I Chose Poorly

In my last post, I talked about the difficulty I had choosing one of my good notebooks for (some kind of) a journal. I wish I was still dithering because I chose so poorly.

I had this great navy blue, hardcover notebook with silver stars on the front. Perfect, I thought. It even had gorgeous holographic stars on the page edges. It was so beautiful. I was agog. Beautiful edges, navy blue so it will stay clean-looking. What more could I ask for?

Choice made, I began adding the journaling stickers I've been buying for several years to the pages.

It wasn't until I had a number of weeks in that I noticed that the pages were getting lumpy because I was putting the stickers in the same places. Seven days in a week, across two spreads, giving myself enough room to write.

I didn't expect this because it's the thick, 160 GSM paper. Although maybe I should have known? It's just that I primarily use Tomoe River Paper, which is very thin and I have to be very careful with stickers. I expected thicker paper would have easier results.

I decided I'd live with the lumpy.

What made my choice of notebook such a poor one is that the stickers wrecked the smoothness of the page edges. Now there were gaps. Small gaps, but still gaps. Which means that gorgeous holograph is muted. Mostly gone.

I should have picked a notebook with regular edges, but it's far too late now.

I have learned a valuable lesson.