"So…where the bloody hell did that come from?"

"The Twilight Hour" is the output of a long, rambling discussion with the off-beat genius who the world knows best as Melissa Ivory, via MSN, late one Saturday night. Melissa mentioned that she had a real soft spot for the Sporta/Robbie pairing, and in a moment of blithe, I-can-do-anything-I-am-invincible madness, I thought, "Hey, why not?" and volunteered to write her a full-on, M-rated one-shot as a Christmas present. (For the record, my gift in return was "Sweet Surrender", which is easily the sweetest, most beautiful Robbie/Stephanie story ever. I urge you to read it, because I still can't help the sneaking feeling I got the better end of the deal.)

We talked about it some more, and agreed that it would be cheating to do anything other than make it part of the LT continuity I'd established for Theory of Everything/On the Flip Side/After the Rain. Something of a challenge, since I've always written Sportacus as utterly, relentlessly straight and a hundred per cent devoted to Stephanie, and Robbie as gay but completely uninterested in the Man in Blue.

Having made this promise, I then realised how hard it is to write good slash (rather than just some generic nonsense that could be about any two men, with no names or personalities, anywhere in the world) - what an amazing job some of the writers on the fandom had already done, and how tough it was going to be to add anything to it. For the longest time, I was completely stalled on the project. I just couldn't see how to do it. Why would the versions of Robbie and Sportacus I'd written ever be interested in going to bed together? Why? Why? Why?

I was lost and about to admit defeat, when Heath Ledger - the late, great and sorely missed Heath Ledger - rather mysteriously came to my rescue with his portrayal of the Joker. "I don't have a plan," he confided (while dressed, I seem to remember, as a nurse). "I just...do what I do. I'm just like a dog chasing cars...I wouldn't know what to do if I caught one..." And for some reason, as he said those words, the entire story fell into place, and I knew how I wanted to do it. I came home and stayed up until about 3am and wrote the entire thing in one glorious, torrential splurge.

I am firmly convinced that when this happens - those times when you're lost in a writing trance, the experience that the Stephen King hero of Everything's Eventual calls the "river of fire in your head" - it's actually not the author doing the writing at all. Instead, one of the characters has taken control for a while and is guiding the pen, like Alice looking over the shoulder of the White King. I'm officially crediting Robbie Rotten for every little bit of this story. It's his work, not mine.

I should probably point out that in "The Twilight Hour", Robbie makes peripheral references to events that are described in "Theory of Everything", "On the Flip Side" and "After the Rain". However, I hope that the story also works as a stand-alone piece.

Melissa - thank you for setting me one of the most stretching and inspiring writing challenges of my life. As always - I owe you, honey, for this and for so much else besides.

And to anyone else who reads it - I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.