People are endlessly fascinating, aren’t we? I always want to know more about people, especially the ones in my novels, so I’ve tried to get to know each of them as well as I can. By now, after living with them since 2005, when I began writing God’s Thunderbolt: The Vigilantes of Montana, I know them pretty well. Like real people, though, they do surprise me.
Every named character in my novels begins well before he or she appears publicly. Presumably, they go on after the novel ends, too. I say presumably because their entire stories aren’t known to me yet.
So far I’ve written and published two novels, with a third well under way and a fourth in the back of my mind. If I end the Vigilante books after the fourth one, I’ll tell you what happened to the characters, if I know by then.
Right now it’s enough for me to know where they came from and how they arrived in Alder Gulch, Montana, during the brief but very rich gold rush.
