Of course, at this point, Captain Nguyen didn't even have a first name.
He couldn't be part of the arc with Finn because that's already planned out and has two other heroes waiting to finish the storyline. I've been living with these guys (and their heroines) for years. Also, there was no way to squeeze in another story. The captain needed his own arc and that meant I needed two more stories to make a second trilogy.
Book 1 is the captain. Book 3 was easy, too, because I'd been toying with this h/h almost as long as with Finn and his heroine. That left Book 2. After a quick review of Ryder's story, I had that hero, too.
Next I needed first names for my guys. That went quicker than expected. I don't get to choose names for my characters. They pick them, but sometimes they're a pain in the process. When I wrote In the Midnight Hour my heroine made me look for weeks before she said, "that's my name." :-( You don't want to know how many baby name books I paged through, how many websites I visited before I finally had her say that was her name.
Sometimes I get lucky and my characters tell me their names. (Mika Through a Crimson Veil) Most of the time, though, I'm left looking at names until I get an indication that I found it. This time, that went quickly.
Now I needed two heroines for the heroes of books 1 and 2. They appeared and pointed out their names quickly, too. Very unusual. Of course, I did try to talk heroine 2 out of the name she said was hers. It's too strange, I said. It has mythological baggage I said. I tried to find something similar or with the same flavor, but she refused all suggestions. I've learned to just accept and move on.
I even had a little bit of plot for the three book arc come to me. This was over a couple of hours on Sunday and a couple of hours on Monday. Boom! In less than 24 hours, solely because I needed a picture of Finn's captain, I ended up with another three books to write. That did escalate quickly.
