Building A Hero @Liz Flaherty #RomanceGems

I am a pieces and parts person. When I first got interested in writing books, I was ten. My heroines all looked and acted like Trixie Belden, but my heroes had Tim Considine’s hair and Ricky Nelson’s eyes. They danced like Chubby Checker and sang like most any guy who ever walked across the sand in a beach movie. When they talked, they stared right into the heroine’s eyes like Michael Landon on Bonanza, and they kissed like…well, I really didn’t know—I’d never been kissed.

One of my favorites—even then I liked old movies—was Gordon MacRae, and my heroes often ended up with open Irish faces. I’d imagine them singing "You'll Never Walk Alone" at every whipstitch. I wrote and wept and wished I was Shirley Jones. (Except that she was David Cassidy’s stepmother and since we were about the same age and he was seriously cute, I couldn’t have felt motherly about him.)

But you know what happens. I grew up. I married my own hero and had a family and now we have seven grandkids and I don’t know where the time went, but I’m still creating heroes from pieces and parts.

If they’re veterans, they’re quiet ones like my husband, with scars inside and memories they don’t pull out very often. They play their guitars the way he does and look at the heroine the way he still—thank you, God—looks at me. They are tall like my oldest son and built like my youngest son and have my son-in-law’s laugh that will make you happy no matter how mad you want to be. They are irreverent and funny like my old boss and completely loyal like a couple of my brothers and my husband’s best friend. They speak with Sam Elliott’s voice and walk like the four Irishmen in my favorite commercial of all time http://adage.com/article/creativity-pick-of-the-day/tullamore-dew-short-film-tells-beautiful-tale-lost-friend/245279/. Their hair and the color of their eyes are…well, whatever they end up being, because they never matter to me. I don’t mention them often—that way, the reader can make them look however they want them to. I want the hero, after all, to be theirs.

I spend an unconscionable amount of time on Facebook. Yesterday I clicked on a link to Hugh Jackman singing “Oh, What A Beautiful Morning” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8avt6iqAsLc It was, oh, inspiring, to say the least. I do believe my next hero will have an Aussie accent. Hard to do if he’s born in Small Town, Mid-America, but there must be a way.

There you have, whether you wanted it or not, the recipe for Liz Flaherty heroes simply because her post was at the end of the month and she couldn’t think of anything else to write. Now tell us where you find the men you write but we all love.