I enjoy mythology, especially Greek and Norse, and the character of Grendel has always intrigued me. I’ve always thought him not as a troll, but as a man. If Beowulf is the good king then Grendel is the tyrant, and he does the evil that men can do.
I have a novel called Grendel which is based on the premise of a woman falling in love with a man who is quite normal apart from his tendency toward multiple murders, a man who lives with the ghosts of his crimes and who, in his own way, is quite vulnerable.
And now I’m redrafting a story in which a character called Wyatt literally is Grendel. Or he was, a long time ago, and now he’s just an ordinary man. It’s part of my series of stories that go under the umbrella title of the gods which is a contemplation of the lives of the immortals.