I met one of my characters--at the airport

Has this ever happened to you?

I’m sitting at the airport in Dallas on Sunday waiting for my flight to board. I’m reading through Original Sin (for the millionth time—I obsess, I can’t help it) and I hear a male voice behind me say, “Ladies,” in a sweet Texas drawl. I turn around and almost fall out of my chair. No, it isn’t Garth Brooks or Tim McGraw. It’s Dusty.

I know that means absolutely nothing to all of you, but he’s a character out of one of my novels. This guy had longish curly blond hair and blue eyes under a brown cowboy hat. He was beautiful in a rough, cowboy sort of way. He was wearing dark Wranglers with a big silver belt buckle. He might have been twentyish, a few years older than my Dusty, and I gleaned from the conversation between him and the girls sitting behind me that his name was, in fact, Travis, not Dusty, but everything, from the way he looked to the way he talked, and even the things he said, couldn’t have been more Dusty.

I felt all giddy and really wanted to say something, or take his picture or something, but that would look, well…a little crazy, or at best, stalkerish, so I didn’t. But I still really wish I had—maybe a quick cell phone pic on the sly…

So, I closed Original Sin, and opened Dusty Lane, which I’m revising for my truly fabulous agent. Now I’ll obsess over Dusty for a while. =)

So, is it just me, or do you see your characters sometimes?