It's just a little crush...

My apologies to Jennifer Paige for borrowing her lyrics (and all the rest of you for getting that song stuck in your heads...)

I have a fictional crush. Admitting it is the first step.

It's not the suspects you might think -- not Jack Reacher, though he's popular with the ladies. It is not the icons of either Team Edward or Team Jacob.

It's Bren Cameron.

Awkward silence, I know. Unless you've read all 11 volumes of CJ Cherryh's Foreigner saga, you likely would never have heard of him. They aren't the books that get trumpeted whenever a new one comes out. There's been no gorgeous movie star playing Bren.

I'm getting ready to start the 11th book in the series and I'm so excited to spend another 300 pages with Bren. He's a diplomat, the human who has to keep peace between the other humans, a space station, an alien race on the same planet. He's done his job well -- too well, some would say -- and now rebels are trying to use him as political leverage, making him a target.

But why the crush? I met Bren Cameron when I was 16 or 17. I read the first three books in the series, then the next three. When the third trilogy came out, I went back and read the first six books again and then plowed ahead. When I reread them, I understood the predicaments he was in so much better, the quiet politics. The need to say things, or not say things. It was something that now-more-grown-up Bethany understood better than teenager Bethany.

Is the crush really about Bren Cameron? No, not really.

It's about an author putting words on paper that ring true about a person trying to figure out their wide in circumstances that are entirely alien. We all feel like that from time to time... and Bren's been there through big transitions in my life ... high school to college... college to grad school... you get the idea.

What characters have you had fictional crushes on? Or have meant something to you over the years?