Writers, readers, have you ever found any characters in unexpected places?

One of my favorite characters is Allistair Seymour “Rocky” Rochester IV, a precocious and wealthy self-proclaimed teenage genius. (He’ll appear in Historytown: Titanic Voyage, a romantic time-travel story which is in the hands of beta readers as we speak!)

I’m not one for visualizing my characters all that much, but when I saw Bud the Halo orange, I knew it was him.

OK OK, the hair and skin color aren’t quite right, and, well, any halo he wore would certainly be ironic. But something about the clothes and the body language…I just feel like this is “him.”

What about you? Readers, writers, have you ever found a beloved character in an unexpected place?