I Found Josef, Or Uh, He Found Me, Or Whichever.

This post goes hand in hand with my last post, Can You See Them? Your Characters, That Is.

A few days ago as I was mindlessly browsing my Facebook news feed, I came across a post from an author I'm following who posts photos of people and ads and such things from the era of the book she had written, which is the early 1900's. For the curious. The post was of this photograph of a handsome young man.

Dapper!

Swoon! I think I could look at him all day.

Um, herm.

Okay, back to the post.

Anyway, as I was saying, when I got done drooling (I wasn't really drooling, you can't prove that I was), I realized that this young gentleman, or dandy, or whatever he was, resembled what I pictured in my mind's eye the character Josef Reichardt in the current novel I'm working on.

A little about Mr. Reichardt. Born in Germany in 1803 to a wealthy baron, Josef lost his inheritance after his beloved father's death to his uncle when he married Josef's mother. Josef grew cold and bitter not from the loss of his inheritance alone, but from the abuse his uncle inflicted on him. Josef's reserve snapped and his uncle was the first to receive the nineteen-year-old's revenge. The murder opened a Pandora's Box and Josef was not satisfied with just the death of his uncle. His thirst for killing turned to murdering his own family and those that had ever crossed him.

Josef was caught, tried, and convicted shortly after the twentieth year of his birth and sentenced to death by firing squad. Days before his sentence, he was approached in his cell by a strange, fair woman who gave him an offer he couldn't refuse—immortality. Delirious from the punishment he received in prison, he thought it all a dream until dream became reality, and the woman, with her two accomplices, broke him from prison to perform the ritual which baptized him into a vampire. And to effectively be rid of his past life, Josef needed to return to prison as if he'd never left and carry out his sentence. On that day, Josef stood defiant, refusing to wear a blindfold, and twelve guns shot twelve bullets into his chest.

Eighty years later, Josef and his nomadic vampire "family" settle in the small village of Nashville, Michigan, and as usual it is only to be for a short while until they pack up and move elsewhere. It is there Josef meets Jennie and falls in love with her best friend, Millie. Mysterious deaths and his all too coincidental arrival to the village spurs Jennie to believe he is the one responsible, and tries to find proof. Meanwhile, her best friend falls in love with Josef's good looks and charm despite warning Millie to keep away from him.

That's Josef in a nutshell. So far he is the most developed character in my head when it comes to his past. I have some idea as to Jennie's and Millie's pasts, enough to write them, and I'm sure the further I delve into the story, the more I'll uncover. That's the glory and hindrance of the discovery writer. It's great to find something new about a character you thought you knew, but it can be problem fleshing out a character until you do discover those bits. I'm also realizing that the further I write this story, the more it's deviating from the focus on the two girls to Josef, who is the antagonist. I suppose I should have seen this coming, I've always gravitated toward my male characters.

Someday I may have another ah ha moment and find pictures of young women that fit the bill of how I imagine Jennie and Millie to look like. Until then, they will remain in my imagination, unless I decide to try my hand at drawing them. Which is another story, my lack of desire to draw, which I won't bore you with.

I have to say, this is the first time I've found a photo of someone that looks so close to how I imagine my character. I haven't found anyone that looks like how I see my Vlad, the main character in my other novel, although Ben Barnes does look close to how I imagine Vlad's lover, Miklós.

Have you found a picture of someone that resembles a character you've written or are writing? Let's see what you've got.