What the @#*! Are You Doing Here?

Someone unexpected showed up last night. I don’t know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing.

Here’s what happened: I was writing, as I sometimes do, and the narrative was going reasonably well. I finished a scene, but then decided the end was missing something, so I added on to it.

That’s when she showed up. Her name is Sloan. She was my thief back when I played Baldur’s Gate, although the word “thief” is often loosely defined in the fantasy world. The Baldur’s Gate Sloan didn’t do any actual thieving; she was an expert at finding traps and secret doors, etc. The book version of Sloan is also not really a thief; she’s more of a mercenary assassin.

When I made my submission to Wizards of the Coast for their Eberron contest, Sloan was one of the secondary characters. Since I apparently didn’t win that contest, I re-routed the book I submitted to a non-Eberron setting and, as I started writing the new version, Sloan moved from the background and became one of the main characters. And that was fine.

But I’m not working on that book right now. I’m on a completely different book, with a different setting and different rules. Sloan shouldn’t be there. Yet there she was last night, standing on the road as if she not only belonged, but as if she actually owned the damn road. The guy in my book didn’t know what to make of her. Hell, neither did I. But she offered to help him, and he took her up on the offer, so I guess she’s here to stay.

I don’t know what’s going to come out of this; the feeling in my stomach is either excitement or trepidation. Right now, it’s hard to tell which.