1. ". . . I have to say, I'm curious. You're handling this quite well. Has it ever happened to you before? It's quite common for Secret Service agents, unfortunately, but I've never heard about the ratio of knocks on the head per outlaw."
"It's not the first time," Coley responded noncommittally. His expression, however, darkened at whatever memory had been dragged to the surface.
Arte could tell he was not about to reveal any more of his past then that. And that was alright; it was just an idle question anyway.
Albeit he could not help being curious when he saw Coley's storm-cloud expression.
-from The Night of the Lazarus,
Chapter Six
There wasn't really any way or point to getting into it in the story, but I got a silly idea of Coley accidentally being clobbered by one of his men once (probably thinking he was the enemy and striking without making sure first). You can bet that when he came to and the world stopped spinning, he slapped that guy around a bit. I eventually wrote it out as a short, silly blurb at the writing community 31 Days at livejournal.com.
I still kind of wanted to get it into one of the big stories, however, and Lafe's appearance in Deadly Codename was the perfect place to insert it as a flashback. However, I fleshed it out, changed a lot of Lafe's dialogue, and generally made it more serious. The original silliness just wasn't very fair to Lafe, and I wanted to change that.
2. The concept of the guest's cat Jane adoring Coley in The Night of the Time Travel runs parallel with an old gag from my Yu-Gi-Oh! mystery stories. The ancient Egyptian thief, the Spirit of the Millennium Ring, is always adored by his descendant's tuxedo cat Oreo. Like Coley, he grumbles and growls about the cat's antics ... but he is always the first to jump to protect her.
Coley is not anywhere as grouchy as Yami Bakura, nor is being grouchy his usual mood, but the parallels still stand, despite not really being intentional. I just thought it was too cute for the cat to adore Coley, as I thought years ago about Oreo and Yami Bakura.
3. While Jim is my favorite of the two agents, I sometimes find it more difficult to write for him, particularly in interacting with characters other than Arte. Hence, Arte sometimes gets more screentime, interacting with and being closer to Coley and other members of the main cast than Jim is, and I apparently end up sometimes giving the mistaken impression that Arte is my favorite. I love Arte dearly, but I'm definitely a Jim's girl. I'm hoping to give Jim more screentime in The Night of the Airship, although Arte will definitely have some as well.