Jack of Harts

Captain William Carter recruited three faeries to his cause in 1877, back during the railroad crisis of that year. There were a lot of riots all over the country. Or at least that was the public reporting. What really happened was a tad more interesting, but the newspapers either didn’t know or didn’t report the truth. And what really happened has long since faded out of memory for most people. For William and his cadre of un-aging hunters, life continued as the nation changed and expanded. Fought itself and others. Nearly collapsed to civil war, to plagues and depressions and was tested by great wars.

Sometimes he and his cadre of hunters took part in those wars. Searching for otherworldly threats to deal with. Other times they did not. He had remarkably little to do with the fighting back East during the Civil War for instance. He was on the Western front on the far side of the Mississippi River, dealing with a rather interesting mix of Indian and Mexican otherworldly beings that sought to rise in a time of great chaos and destruction. He became a Marine Raider in World War II, and has been a Texas Ranger throughout its entire existence, even in those times when there WERE no Rangers. It is a useful organization to be part of, and he rather likes most of them. His nature is not publicized, but there are never a great many Rangers, even in modern times, and while the young Rangers may not understand his nature, the older and more experienced Rangers know very well that he is not the son or the grandson of the man who saved their lives twenty or forty years ago, no matter what the paperwork says.

Captain William Carter is an interesting man to write stories about. He never grows old, even as he ages inside. His perspectives change. The world he lives in changes. His threats constantly change. I have to spend a great deal of time studying each time and place I write a story about, and figuring out how he enters the stage. I study the local beliefs and rumors and conspiracy theories to find out what I can use to link a story to that location and time. And also make the story feel unique. The foes unique. I very rarely write stories about classical vampires or werewolves for instance. The press I do most of my writing for has seen way too many of those. They want stuff that hasn’t been produced in twenty million films, so I go to the odder things on the edges of local belief systems to see if I can incorporate them. That makes every story I write feel a bit more unique, and I like that.