When this author lost his best canine friend, he preserved her memory by including her as a character in the novel series he was writing.

by Bjorn Leesson

When a writer commits to creating a world in writing from the whirring creative chaos of their mind, the world becomes very real to the writer in a way. Often, unexpected real-world events find their way into the story, and sometimes that is in the form of a memorial. We all lose loved ones, human and animal, which serves to shake up the writing process. One thing we as storytellers can do is write those who moved on without us into our worlds.

This happened to me while writing the second installment of the Outside the Thalsparr series, Rune of Renewal. At a point in the creation of this segment of Myrgjol the Dokkrsdottir’s adventures—a scene that finds the MMC team escaping Norway after a mission in her original home village of Dyrhagi in 1943—I lost the best dog in the world in real life, Roxie. She was my buddy, my farm hand, and my literal best animal friend. She was a pit bull/boxer/beagle mix, and despite that combination of two popularly accepted aggressive breeds, she was absolutely the sweetest, most loving, and steadfastly loyal dog ever. She was only four when we had to make the hard call to put her down. I was very hurt and crushed for some time, and to this day, I still think of her often.

I immediately changed the scene to insert an unplanned character into the story: Roskr, the little tan puppy. I had just lost my best friend, so what better way to memorialize Roxie?

Despite the emotional trauma, I still continued writing Rune of Renewal. And the second I went back to the keyboard after losing the greatest dog, I immediately changed the scene a bit to insert an unplanned character into the story: Roskr, the little tan puppy. Since Myrgjol had lost so many people in her life at this point, and I had just lost my best friend, what better way to memorialize Roxie? Just a writer’s little way of keeping his best friend alive forever.

True to her real-life inspiration, Roskr becomes not only Myrgjol’s loyal and loving friend, but that of Elring (Myrgjol’s 1940s love interest), Lisa Dawn, Myrgjol Gould, and the whole MMC team, to include even the ever-grouchy Maragaret Peele and the bitter and cynical Maeve “The Black Irish” Lynch. Roskr makes many appearances in the story as a support mechanism for an eclectic team whose missions are extremely tense, stressful, and exhausting—very much like Roxie did for me in the real world.

And, as many of the readers of this series know, the lifespan of most characters in this saga is not particularly long on average. But have no fear for Roskr. She will live a long and productive life in the Thalsparr, that which Roxie deserved in the real world but unfortunately did not receive. As proof of that promise, Roskr’s role in the Thalsparr is not finished yet. I have the beginnings of a spinoff novel, with the working title of Hawk Rock, in which Roskr will continue with the MMC survivors in 1952 against a regular world threat.

Roxie was always my biggest fan, no matter the circumstances or the task I was undertaking, and Roskr is her avatar in the Thalsparr to continue the role for me. I am sure she is just one of many memorial characters in countless novels out there, as it should be.

Bjorn Leesson was born in the South Carolina lowcountry a long time ago. He has worked in manufacturing all his working life to feed himself but has nourished his mind with the study of many topics: history of all eras, the paranormal, astronomy, writing of different types, photography, archeology, genealogy, vexillology, some other -ologies, even stock car racing for a couple of years, and on and on. Bjorn finds just about everything fascinating in some way and has been accused of being too easily entertained. He currently lives in the Midlands of South Carolina with his wife of twenty-five years on their hobby farm.

Visit Bjorn at his website and connect with him on Facebook.