I think most writers think in pictures in one way or another. For me, the pictures are literal, like a movie. The scene plays out and I do my best to find words to describe what I see. Sometimes it’s easy. Other times, not so much. Then I hope like heck the characters want to start talking, to fill in the gaps and lazy places where my own words don’t want to go. Most characters are obliging, especially the more cantankerous ones.
Obstinate characters, like “Fury”, speak loud and often, and show themselves clearly. In my head, Fury is Ron Pearlman, the face that’s been a hundred different beings, a mixture of Hell Boy with the stogie hanging from his mouth and long blond hair like Vincent and that rough gravely voice of Conan the Barbarian’s father, Corin. Yeah, that’s who Fury looks like.
When I first met Fury …
From Death’s Last Hand
Paladin stood atop Cooke’s Peak and stared at the petroglyphs on the rock face across the ravine. The rattlesnakes were his favorite. If he watched long enough, stared hard enough, one of them would reward him with a flick of the tongue or the swish of a rattle.
Today was windy and his dark hair lurched and tossed in the wind. That had never happened before. He rubbed a hand across the stubble on his chin, dislodging a few bits of sand. He rubbed the grains between his fingers. “So, that’s what you feel like.”
Feel. He couldn’t remember if he’d ever used that word before.
Behind him, the woman rocked with her arms wrapped around her knees. She’d stopped crying four days ago. She quit cursing him two days ago. It had been an hour since she’d said, “You’re going to be sorry. Cliff will never stop until he gets me back. I’m not going anywhere with you!”
She was due any minute.
Paladin felt them before he saw them – a shift in the wind, a slight drop in temperature. Again, feeling. He rubbed his hand down his sleeve, letting his fingers follow the seams in the leather, marveling at the bumpity-bump of the stitches. He’d always liked the look of this coat. Now he knew it felt good too.
Feelings. Preferences. Desires. Entirely inappropriate. The sentiment floated into his mind as Griffin materialized at his elbow. Inappropriate… his compatriot always had a book in his pocket somewhere – against the rules, of course; but Griffin had been reading human literature for five centuries. Paladin knew it would be useless to make a stink about it now. Especially now.
He frowned. Make a stink… even my words are changing. Smelling the air, the soil… the word stink becomes part of my lexicon. How much longer can I stay here before compassion sinks in?
“Sinks in, indeed,” Griffin said.
“Where are the others?”
“They don’t want to come. Fury says you should never have let yourself get into such a predicament.”
“I don’t compromised by this,” Paladin said. He turned and stared through Griffin at the girl. She stared back, squinting as if trying to see through dirty window panes. Paladin found he was frowning… again. “This girl, that man… there’s something extraordinary about them. He could see me. He could touch the woman after I awakened her.” Paladin indicated his nose. “He punched me.”
“Hey, who you talking to?” Dale asked.
Griffin turned to the woman. “How is that possible?”
“Oh, I see him now,” Dale said.
“She can’t see me,” Griffin said.
“Sure I can. You’ve wearing a real nice sweater – cable knit, black. Black Levi’s. Kinda chic.”
“She does see me!” Griffin said.
Paladin smiled. Five hundred years and that ego had never succumbed to bondage.
“Can you also hear me?” Griffin asked.
“Yeah, I can now,” Dale said. “The longer you stand there, the better I can see you. More so when you’re near the grouch.”
“The grouch?” Griffin laughed.
His blond hair rippled when he laughed, like a golden wave of wheat. Did I just think that? Paladin straightened his back. “This has to stop.” He turned his face into the wind. “All of you, here, now!”
The replies came, sullen… cynical… bitter.
I’m busy doing the work you should be doing. That was Phoenix.
No time to deal with your issues, man. Clearly Condor.
Fuck you. Fury, ever eloquent.
Paladin breathed in the heat surrounding him to cover the anger building inside. He knew they’d feel it, recognize it, and know he was not as free of this situation as he pretended. “Do I have to make this a command?”
“COMMAND? Who the fuck do you think you are?” Fury appeared, almost on Paladin’s toes, his nose so close Paladin could feel whiskers from his thick blond beard – an affectation Fury would not part with.
“Nice of you to join us,” Paladin said. The others were also coming. They would be five when they all arrived. To humans, there would appear to be a slight darkening of the horizon beyond the butte, an indication of rain or a storm perhaps. Especially when Fury was… aggravated.
. . . Death’s Last Hand, Chapter 4
Fury’s motorcycle is a little bit bigger. 
