Rough week for all concerned. My older son got himself a nice case of norovirus. That delightful bug appears to be making the rounds at his school. I’m keeping a loose eye on him as I type this. I think he’s on the mend, and luckily the baby doesn’t seem to have caught it. I’m getting over one of the respiratory things going around my school, and if you want the truth, I’m not sure I entirely kicked the pneumonia from back in November. Gotta love being around the walking petri dishes.
Since I can’t sleep, here’s a bit about my main male character in Amber’s Lure, Mikhail Romanov.
He’s Russian, in case the name didn’t tip one off, and pushing five hundred years old. He spent the majority of his life in and around his homeland, though did wander the European continent off and on. He came to the United States shortly after World War Two, and hasn’t left since then. His English is fluent, though if one pays attention, his accent still shows through, particularly if he gets agitated.
He allowed himself to be turned into a vampire in his early thirties. He had his reasons, and good ones, by his way of thinking. Prior to that, served in Ivan the Terrible’s court as one of his oprichniki, or secret police. Name the atrocity, that group committed it. Repeatedly. These were not nice people by any stretch. Mikhail doesn’t regret any of what he has done. He had (and still has) no reservations about taking someone apart slowly. His one red line is children. Want to get on his bad side in a nanosecond? Harm a child in front of him, or ask him to hurt a kid. That’s a surefire way to find out which afterlife is real.
Mikhail is an artist, and his favorite activities are carving amber, and creating jewelry. He has well over a hundred amber carvings sitting over his fireplace. It’s how he relaxes after a long day of drinking wine, running a nightclub, and other less pleasant endeavors.
His fashion sense trends toward later Victorian or Edwardian. His preferred outfit is a shirt, pants, and waistcoat. He does own other items (and still has a lot of his clothing from when he was still human), though the occasion rarely arises for him to wear such items. Mikhail will usually stick to darker colors, and my main female character has seen no indication that he owns anything pastel.
While he has no regrets, Mikhail does recognize that the past has a tendency to come back and bite a person, especially if one is pushing the five century mark and has done things that would make the most hardened serial killers pale.
But other than that, he’s a great guy! Right?
Hilary