One of the things you learn, or are taught, as a novel writer is to take a step back and look at all the characters in your book.

You have to ask yourself could one character be doing this job where I have several.

With George and the Dragon I was no different.  Originally I had a French speaking female spy working with the allies and  a coven of magic users from different corners of the globe and the hint of a female Nazi agent who would become a rival for our female spy.

The female spy was replaced with Squadron Leader Andy McKnight. (Check out the word cloud and you'll get an idea that he is a major player in the book).  He is the Bruce Willis/Hugh Jackman/Liam Neeson type of the book. Slightly older, grizzled but still more than able to take care of himself.  He already had a major part in the book anyway and easily slipped into his new role as well.

The coven was written out as well as they just added unnecessary confusion in a book that already has a fairly large number of significant characters.

The reason I'm discussing this is that I came to a conclusion this morning.  There's another character in the book I need to deal with.  He has a reasonably significant role to play in the book but then his involvement ends and I originally dealt with that by sending him off never to be heard of again.   That seemed a bit 'convenient' and so I've decided to make him a hero and kill him off.  There are reasons for this that will become clearer when you read the book.  As will my decision to add the above photo to this post: