I’m getting back into the writing groove. The last few weeks took an emotional toll on me, and it’s hard figuring out the new normal.
Thankfully, there is an endless supply of social media games and challenges to keep me blogging along. So if I borrow from Instagram’s #igAuthorLifeJan, Twitter’s #AuthorConfession, and the 52 Week Blog Challenge, I have well over a year’s worth of blog topics!
For this week’s post I’m borrowing from the Twitter game #AuthorConfessions. While meant to be a post-a-day for the month of January, I thought the topics would make for excellent blog posts. Besides, I’d fail at the Twitter game–goodness knows I can’t keep it to 140 characters…with hashtags!
So who is my favorite character in The Seduction of the Duke? I know I should say my Hero or Heroine, for I truly do love Graeme and Delaney. To be fair, I chose them as my Hero and Heroine for a reason…I’m supposed to love them! But if I were to choose anyone other than them in the book, it would have to be Stryker.
Fun Fact: Stryker is actually named after a friend’s dog. When I first became interested in writing and romance, I attended the Literacy Book Signing for Romance Writers of America and took my friend’s dog with me. The original Stryker is a Tall, Dark and Handsome Labrador retriever. At 15 months old, he was a puppy in training for Guide Dogs of America and was allowed limited access in public. He was also on “breeder watch”. What better place to take a future breeder than a romance writers convention? And what better name for a romance Hero than Stryker? And that is how Stryker go his name. :)
If you read the Sunday Snippets from a couple of years ago, you’ll recall Stryker as Graeme’s closest friend. Stryker is a fun-loving rake who always has a different woman on his arm when he goes out. He’s always trying to help Graeme with his “lady troubles,” but when Graeme follows through on his advice, it all seems to go wrong. This leads to some pretty funny situations…for the readers. Graeme and Delaney don’t see the humor in it, though.
Stryker is such a complex character. Kind of the “go-to” man when you need something done, but don’t want anyone finding out about it. He deals with secrets in the London Underworld, and is not afraid of getting his hands dirty. Even his name, Stryker, is a nickname given to him for the way he constantly strikes the flintlock on his pocket pistol.
I am a visual person. I need to know in my mind’s eye who my characters are. Oh, they tell me who they are, but I need to know what they look like, and for that I turn to Pinterest and it multitude of celebrity photos. As soon as I met Stryker (the character, not the dog), I knew that he had a Secret. And it’s a doozy. I knew that Secret would take place in his past and color everything that he does in his current life. I also knew from the start that his story would take place over that long period of time–twelve years, to be exact. I needed someone who had been around a while, someone who had grown up on screen and had pictures to show for it. From that criteria, I knew exactly who he would be the physical embodiment of Stryker. Which is why you are seeing various pictures of Christian Bale throughout his movie career. Like I could go wrong with pictures of Christian Bale on a blog. ;)
But what you see of Stryker in the early stories is only a tiny bit of who he is, and as the series progresses he reveals himself, and what drives him, more each time. He is the perfect opposite to Graeme in Seduction. I picture their relationship to be similar to that of Holmes and Watson in the Sherlock Holmes movies with Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law. With Graeme being similar to Watson and Stryker the more carefree Holmes.Like his namesake, Stryker is the quintessential Tall, Dark, and Handsome romance hero. High cheekbones with features that could be considered harsh. He lost his innocence towards life at a young age and it can physically be seen on his face, especially his eyes, though he hides it well with his devil-may-care attitude. What he is afraid to show is that he does care. Deeply.
When I first started planning my Reluctant Lords series, Stryker was the first Hero I came up with. But as the series developed, as he developed, I knew I could not tell his story first. In fact, his had to be the last story in the series. His back story, his romance, and the series arc all come to a head in The Claiming of the Earl. You can read a sneak peak of it here.
Not only is he one of my favorite characters in this book, but he’s probably my favorite in the entire series. And we don’t find out about him fully until book four.
I know, I’m such a tease. ;)
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