Please check it out.

I’ll be back shortly. Friday.

Promise.

Only now, I’m the one doing the creating, based on all that has come before, all that God has placed before me in this buffet of creativity. And what touched my 8-year-old heart with Robin, what inspired me in Jonathan Harker and Denys Finch Hatton, what revived me in the aftermath of The Matrix still stirs my soul and makes my eyes glisten with wonder.

A sense of humor. Integrity. Determination. Eyes filled with dreams and emotion and drive. Respect for those around them, especially those they love. Layer in a bit of temper and passion, a painful past, and enough “scars” of maturity, and you began to sigh when they come around.

If a writer does her job well, from the first appearance of the hero, you want to know more. You immediately take on his cause, his journey, his goal. You want the hero to win the heroine in the same way he has won you.

Jonathan and Denys made one more odd swoop through my life in the late 1990s, before the actor passed out of my attention for a long while, in a short-lived show that aired on the PBS Mystery! series. I only managed to catch one episode of Heat of the Sun, mostly because the local PBS station appeared on my tv intermittently (I haven’t had cable since 1996).

I watched because it was set in Africa (see all Denys references above) and featured a character more or less based on Beryl Markham. I squinted a bit (“Why does he look so familiar?”), then moved on.

Fortunately for me, there was a writer in Britain, Barbara Machin, who was about to launch a hero that would do just what a good hero should. In about five minutes, he stirred my interest and would send me spinning in a whole new direction.

It also didn’t hurt that he looked like an older version of Jonathan, and Denys, and…

What goes around…

So note how much you learn about the characters in Waking the Dead from this clip. In terms of a script, it’s the equivalent of two pages.

TWO PAGES, folks.

This is why editors and agents beg for snappy openings, rapid development, and attention grabbing dialogue. Don’t just tell us what you love. Show us what your characters love. Show us who they are.

And what my new detective loves – and who he is as a man – is how I got from the inspiration of Waking the Dead, Barbara Machin, and Trevor Eve to Nashville and The Bones of Gregory Miller.

Stay tuned…

After yesterday’s post, someone asked if I always developed the hero from a celebrity crush. Actually, it’s usually the other way around. The hero is built, then I cast him. For instance, Fletcher MacAllister, the hero of A Murder Among Friends, came into existence in about 1982 (and I still have the first rejection letter to prove it). He was always tall and lanky, of Scottish-Thai descent, and had a quiet determination about him, calm and strong. It wasn’t until about 2003 that he started to look like this guy:

The character definitely came first. After all, in 1982, Mr. Reeves was still a spritely young’un hanging out in Canada. (Although I did lift Fletcher’s first name from Mr. Knight’s character in The Immortal.) Likewise, Mason DuBroc, my half-Cajun, slightly hyper, art crime investigator in The Face of Deceit bounced around in my head for almost a year before starting to resemble this young man:

I suspect most writers work in that direction. As Marti and Jen pointed out previously, other characteristics tend to blossom first: their hero’s integrity, an intriguing past, or some physical aspect. A voice, heard in the night, or the movement of the head. Words or phrases that linger, telling you a lot about a man . . .

I, for instance, have a weakness for intelligent men with a twisted sense of humor. Also a weakness for floppy hair. And strong forearms. And a bright, unexpected smile that reaches into the eyes and lights up a face. And light hair.

*ahem*

Back to the hero at hand, who will take up residence in The Bones of Gregory Miller. Set in Nashville, it’s actually four books away (I hope), following three I’m proposing to Steeple Hill, and Reclaiming Daisy Doe, which I plan to finish by November 1. Although the plot is new, my hero has been growing in my head for a long time. Take, for instance, this slight side trip through the 80s, when one of my celebrity “crushes” was on a woman (and, no, it’s not THAT kind of crush).

I became fascinated with Beryl Markham, a remarkable woman.

When the announcement of her death made the news, along with a number of brief bio sketches, it set me off on a whirlwind of research. Among other details about this fascinating woman was the tidbit that one of the great loves of her life was Denys Finch Hatton, who had previously been in a hot affair with Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen) – an affair richly portrayed in the movie Out of Africa, with Robert Redford (a blond!) taking the role of Denys, to great acclaim.

I read everything I could on Beryl Markham and Denys Finch Hatton. Then, in 1988, there came a television bio pic starring Stefanie Powers.

I was glued to the screen, discovering that the guy playing Denys looked an awful lot like 1979′s Jonathan Harker.

Well, yeah. Same guy. But, again, this was the 80s. British character actor not seen in the US much. Had to shelve the interest. Just not a lot out there.

But that was about to change . . .

Do you believe that God is involved in every minute aspect of your life? Because of my faith, I don’t really believe in coincidences. I do believe He plants tiny seeds that take years to germinate. I do believe He puts mile markers in our passings to say, “Pay attention, this will come around again.”

I do believe He did everything He could to make me a writer. Among other gifts (and He’s showered me at times), He gave me an insatiable curiosity about people, a love of research and knowledge, a passion for a good story, and a whole series of teachers who turned me on to words, including one who gave a 12 year old rein to do her book reports about Shakespearean plays.

He also gave me a mother who tolerated a daughter papering the bedroom walls with photos of men. Lots of men.

My first celebrity crush was Robin, the Boy Wonder. (Don’t snicker; I was eight.) And not, mind you, the deliciously campy version as portrayed by Burt Ward on prime time TV. Nope, I went head over grammar school heels for the guy in the comic books that I pilfered from my brother’s closet. The stage was thus set for me to “bond” to a hero with some pretty classic traits: good looks, tragic past, strong morals and sense of honor and integrity, ready for action, intelligence, good looks . . .

You get the picture.

Also note that it was one of the few times that I went for the dark-haired one. I don’t know why, but I never totally understood the appeal of “tall, dark, and handsome.” My gaze almost always flitted to the not-as-tall blond in the picture. Possibly because I’m short and come from a family with a lot of blond men in it.

So while millions of women were sighing over Han Solo, I was moon-eyed over Luke. Robert Redford. (And to really show my age: David McCallum’s Illya Kuryakin.) But it didn’t have to be the lead in a movie or TV show. I went gaga over a whole series of character actors, such as Don Knight in The Immortal. Some of these gentlemen remained a mere shade on the screen back in the 60s, 70s, and early 80s because we didn’t have the Internet, just lots and lots of magazines. (I spent a lot of time in the archive section of my libraries . . . to say that I studied men would be a bit of an understatement . . . )

Then, in 1979, there came a film that was instrumental not only in the evolution of one of my 21st century heroes but a shift in the entire romance genre. It took more than a decade for tv and books to catch up, but there, in its little bat cave (again with the bats…), lay an image that would change the way we viewed vampires forever.

Look familiar?

BUT while women everywhere were dreaming of a sunset lover who could arrive in a mist and leave his women sated and breathless, my gaze wandered firmly toward Lucy’s erstwhile fiance and rescuer, the “not-exactly-blond-but…” Jonathan Harker . . .