Dan's reasonably supportive of my fiction writing project, but he keeps asking when I'm going to introduce the hero of the story, a guy he's named Stan Best.

"I'm not really sure that Stan is going to be included in the scope of this story," I keep telling him.  "I'm pretty sure Alice is going to be single at the conclusion of the arc I'm contemplating."

"But," Dan protests, "you could just write Stan in as a little vignette.  Like Alice is thinking to herself about the ideal husband, and she magically imagines Stan Best."

"Hmmm," I say.

"Clive Cussler writes himself into all of his books," Stan - I mean Dan - continues.

"He DOES?  How?"  Dan has read like seventy or eighty Clive Cussler adventure novels.

"The main characters meet a little man who helps them on their journey."

"And the man is named Clive Cussler?"

"Yes! And he describes his beard and everything."

While I hear and acknowledge Dan's desire to be represented in my writing as Stan Best, I just can't promise that's going to happen.  And we'll leave it there.