Lyme

I've wanted to visit Lyme for many years. Last week we had to drive right past the gate on our way to somewhere else, so we grabbed the opportunity! Hopefully, we'll be able to return very soon, because unfortunately we didn't have the time to walk around the gardens, or recreate that iconic photo of the house from the other side of the lake.

Lyme

Whenever I go into an old house, I always ensure I look up at the ceilings! This time I was struck by the strange symbol that occurred over and over again - of what appeared to be a severed arm holding a pennant! According to legend, prior to the Battle of Crécy in 1346, the English sacked Caen and a French nobleman managed to seize the standard of the Black Prince.

To have lost your standard, before a battle had begun, would have been hugely humiliating for the Prince, but fortunately it was retrieved by Sir Thomas Danyers, who was given the lands where Lyme now stands as a reward. The land was inherited by his granddaughter, Margaret, who married Sir Piers Legh. The land and, later, the house, was then in the Legh family until passed to the National Trust in 1946.

The Entrance Hall

The first building on the site was a 15th century hunting lodge. It wasn't until 1570 that a grand Elizabethan house was built. Although that ancient core still exists, in 1725, the house was remodelled in the Italian Renaissance style. 

My favourite room was the library. After the family left in 1946, it fell into disrepair and has now been restored. The family's books are stamped with a ram's head crest on their spines.

The Library

Wouldn't this bay make a terrific book nook?

The Library Bay

The Caxton or Sarum Missal is one of the earliest known printed books that bears the stamp of William Caxton, the father of British printing. It was used for daily prayers, weddings, baptisms and funerals. It survived, largely intact, because it was hidden when King Henry VIII banned it. It wasn't rediscovered until 1874.

The Caxton or Sarum Missal

Before we left Lyme, we quickly popped into the garden. There wasn't much time to explore (hopefully, one day we'll come back) but were were able to visit the Orangery, which I loved. In a huge coincidence, the book I'm working on at the moment, has a glass house which looks very similar to this!

The orangery (right) and the Wyatt Garden

Inside the Orangery

You may recognise Lyme as Mr Darcy's 'Pemberley' from the BBC's adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice! The exterior scenes were filmed here, while the interior scenes were shot at Sudbury Hall.

The BBC's Pride and Prejudice inspired my book, Why Do Fools Fall in Love, which is about the filming of a costume drama, another reason I was keen to visit Lyme! 

So I couldn't resist picking up this mug in the giftshop, to much eye-rolling from my husband.

Links:

Lyme (National Trust)

Related Posts:

Inspiration: Why Do Fools Fall in Love

Sources:

Lyme: National Trust Guidebook

The Making of Price and Prejudice, Sue Birtwistle & Susie Conklin

I Need a Hero

This week I'm talking about the kind of hero I love to write.  

When I first began writing, my heroes were always tall, dark-haired, blue-eyed and had a good sense of humour - mainly because I was married to a man who is tall, dark-haired, blue-eyed and has a good sense of humour - and I still am! But I soon realised it's not such a great idea to try and shoehorn one's husband into every story - he won't always fit. Besides, I would hate to think any of my heroes could be taken out of the environment of their own book and carelessly plonked into another with only a change of name and hair colour. I've worked hard to ensure they all have their own very different flaws, quirks and problems, which is why I love them - and why the basic idea for my stories has to come before I create them (see My Writing Process).

Not me, or my husband, or my house
(which is lucky, as they seem to have a serious case of woodworm)

For example, in my current work-in-progress I wanted to give both hero and heroine a whole heap of trouble relating to their respective (and very eccentric) families. The hero's way of dealing with this is to studiously ignore the fact he even has a problem, whereas the heroine is planning on being a little more proactive - maybe too proactive. And, because I'm evil, obviously all their best efforts to avoid a crisis are about to go horribly wrong. It sounds simple, doesn't it? Characters creating themselves and the story writes itself? The reality is not quite as easy as that.

So what kind of heroes do I like writing best?

I'm very fond of the stranger-comes-to-town-and-is-he-all-he-seems hero (pretty much like any western you've ever watched). Why? Well, think about when you meet someone for the first time, and they tell you their name, and maybe a bit about their job or their family. What if it's all a pack of lies? Or, worse, they're pretending to be someone else entirely?

I also find anti-heroes fun to write, but not necessarily more popular with readers. If obnoxious, he has to have some redeeming qualities or he'll come across as a complete arse - or, in romance terms, an 'alpha-hole'. In Why Do Fools Fall in Love I had two possible heroes (going on the principle of why have one when you can have two): the wise-cracking Luke and the tortured-by-his-horrible-childhood Ross. (Spoiler alert). Guess which one my readers liked best? Luke. And why was that? Because Ross had one (and, as it turned out in the story, almost fatal) flaw: he treated women horribly, including the heroine. And by the time he'd realised his mistake it was too late. So he'll have to put in a lot of work if he wants to find his HEA.

If I have a hero-with-a-tragic-past, like Greg in Breathless, he's got to have a very good reason for the whole brooding mysteriously thing, unless he wants the heroine to mistake his hidden depths for basic sulking. In Greg's case he felt responsible for the death of his sister. Bryn in Nemesis has a similar background but, as his personality is more proactive, he feels he has far more important things to do than stakeout a graveyard and look moody - like solve his cousin's murder.

As most of my books do have a murder to solve, I've had heroes who've been police detectives or investigative journalists. It's easier that way; the police are very picky about who they let walk all over their crime scenes. I also like using characters who are celebrities: Luke in Why Do Fools Fall in Love, Zac in Breathless and the heroes of my Proposal series, because they come with their own (usually self-inflicted) set of problems.

I don't describe a hero's physical appearance much beyond hair and eye colour. This is deliberate. I know what the character looks like inside my head, but I want the reader to do some of the work too. Too much detail from me will read like a 'most wanted' poster. And, by basing a character on a real person - a hot actor, for example - I'd be assuming that because I find a certain type of man attractive, my reader would too. Surely it's better to let them cast their own hero?

The other danger to casting a famous actor as the hero of a novel is that (assuming I've never met him in real life) I'd be reusing the character he is most famous for playing rather than the man himself - a bit like fan fiction. I'd rather be original! And I do my best to ensure my heroes are too.

Related Posts:

I Need a Heroine
How I Create Characters
Characters: What's in a Name

Perfectly Imperfect (Why rockstars make the best romantic heroes)


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Photo copyright: Fotolia

Characters: What's in a Name?

In which I talk about how I find names for my characters.    

This blog post was prompted by three conversations I've had with my readers over this past month, about how I name my characters. Two pointed out I'd chosen the same name as one of their relatives (sorry, it's purely coincidental!) another queried why I'd named a character after a dog(!)

Like most authors, I have a book of baby names (although the only time I've ever used it was when I was trying to choose a name for my own children) but I try not to pick a name at random, even for the minor characters. The name has to mean something. I have more trouble with surnames - they are sometimes chosen at random. Luke McFadden, the hero from Why Do Fools Fall in Love, owes his surname to one of my husband's books on computer programming. I'm not the only author to do this. Ian Fleming took the name of James Bond from a book on birdwatching!

More recently I've been delving into my family tree and borrowing their surnames. Lydia Cavill, the police inspector in Nemesis, who also features in Trust Me I Lie, was the name of one of my several times great-grandmothers. Vines (spelt Vynes in Nemesis) and Groves (Nemesis) are also family surnames. Halfpenny (Breathless) was the surname of a lady I got chatting to in a Jacuzzi!

First names require a little more work. They have to suit the character who has taken up residence inside my head and, for me at least, they have to have some kind of meaning. Sometimes I do cheat - Shelby (Why Do Fools Fall in Love) was just a name I loved - at the time I didn't realise it was also the name of a car designer (and therefore a car!) As Shelby is not the kind of name that occurs very often in the UK, I felt I did have to give a reason for calling her that. So I decided her mother had been a huge fan of Hollywood movies, and gave Shelby three brothers: Harrison, Cary and Irving. As in Harrison Ford, Cary Grant and Irving Berlin (the man who wrote White Christmas).

To Joseph Halfpenny (Breathless) family comes before everything, so I had him name his daughters after his aunts: Phyllis, Selma and Connie - giving them overly 'old-fashioned' names to emphasise the point. (Sorry, if your name is Phyllis, Selma or Connie!) In Nemesis I had a character who was so eccentric she called her three children Summer, Autumn and Wynter, but in the final rewrite she was edited out - leaving me with three siblings called Summer, Autumn and Wynter, and readers perhaps wondering if I was the one who was eccentric.

And the character I named after a dog? Well, that would have been the bodyguard, Bruno, from Why Do Fools Fall in Love. And the idea behind that was that I kind of imagined him to be a human version of a bulldog.

Of course sometimes this method does land me in trouble. In my novella The Indecent Proposal I needed a name for a famous singer, but every time I created one I liked, I found (via Google) there was already a singer with the same name! My creations became sillier and sillier, and still there were singers out there with exactly the same name! Eventually the poor girl ended up being called Destiny Swan. Why is this a problem? Well, for my next book I've decided to use her as one of the main characters. There is no way I'm spending a whole book calling the girl 'Destiny'. She's going to have to be nicknamed 'Desi' - and lump it!

So, how do you choose your characters' names?

Related Posts:

How I Create Characters

I Need a Heroine

Tales of Smugglers and Seaweed

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A Girl's Best Friend

I've written stories for as long as I can remember. The earliest were children's stories, as I was heavily influenced by what I had read - Enid Blyton and CS Lewis. As I moved into my teens I began reading fantasy, particularly Terry Pratchett, and I wrote my first - and last! - fantasy. It was called The Dreamscape and I still have a soft spot for it.

By now I was becoming more serious about my writing, reading lots of 'how to' books and attending writers' conferences, and it was then I had that lightbulb moment, realising I should really be writing what I was reading. I was in my early twenties and, while I still loved reading Terry Pratchett, I was increasingly reading big glitzy novels with glamorous characters and locations. So I thought, 'OK, what can I write about that's glitzy?' And the answer was diamonds.

Bishop's Palace, Wells

I failed to take into consideration what writers call their 'voice'. I might have loved reading glitzy books and I certainly enjoyed writing what I thought was a glitzy book, but by the time I'd finished it was something else entirely. In other words, the story grew into a typical Louise Marley mix of romantic suspense with a dash of humour.

I think if I were writing the story now, I wouldn’t have characters who are identical twins, because that has become such a cliché. At the time I wanted to write about two sisters and their love/hate relationship. Danielle and Isabel are two of my favourite heroines and I love the contrast in their personalities. Danielle is so obsessed by her work that she’s forgotten how to have fun. Isabel, who does nothing but have fun, needs to become more responsible.

The mysterious Nico is one of my favourite heroes. In the original paperback version he was a lot meaner, but while I was revising the story for the ebook version I had a change of heart and made him kinder. This was the first and last time I ever based the appearance of a character on a real person. Who? I'm not telling, but if you read the book you'll spot the clues!

St Bartholomew's, Botley, Hampshire

I used Bishop's Palace in Wells as Nico's family home and St Batholomew's Church in Botley for St Mary's Church (even though there's no crypt or cliff!). The exterior of Stortford House, where the twins live, is based on Highgrove in Gloucestershire, although the garden, with its topiary, is Levens Hall in Cumbria. I did so much research about diamonds that I swore I'd never write anything requiring that amount ever again! Something I also swore after writing Why Do Fools Fall in Love (film industry) and Breathless (marine archaeology) and - well, you get the idea!

I nearly gave the story the title of Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend, but decided it was just too long. This is the title of a famous song, sung by Marilyn Monroe in the movie Gentlemen Prefer Blondes - a movie based on a book by the famous author Anita Loos. I've referenced one of her quotes within my story. I wonder if you can spot it?

I had great fun writing A Girl's Best Friend - I hope you enjoy reading it!

Amazon UK

Amazon USA

A Girl's Best Friend

Are diamonds really a girl’s best friend? Danielle van der Straaten thinks so. Her boyfriends cheat on her, her sister drives her mad and her father only wants to see her married with children - despite all the work she’s put into the family jewellery business. Diamonds are the only thing she can rely on.

Her sister, Isabel, doesn’t care about diamonds, provided she has something sparkly to wear to a party and a gorgeous man to dance with. Life is for living and having fun. And if their money disappeared tomorrow? She’d be in serious trouble.

Jemma Stortford finds it hard seeing Danielle and Isabel living the life that should have been hers. But when she wakes up one morning to find the handsome Nico Morales in her bed, it appears her luck has finally changed. But is Nico who he claims to be? And why is he so interested in the van der Straatens?

As the three women are about to find out, sometimes diamonds aren’t a girl’s best friend at all!

To read an extract, click here

A Girl's Best Friend: Behind the Scenes

Inspiration: Why Do Fools Fall in Love?

Why Do Fools Fall in Love wasn't the first book I wrote, that was A Girl's Best Friend. Nor was it the first one to be published, that was Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, but it's the one which has sold the most copies - something over 40,000. Sometimes I try to work out why it has been so popular - but that's probably the Virgo in me, I'm always trying to analyse things!

I had great fun writing the story! At the time I was unpublished and, as an unpublished writer, you have the luxury of being able to write whatever you like without worrying about sales or marketing or hooking into the Next Big Thing.

I was living in Bath and, at the time, it seemed there was a never-ending stream of production companies filming costume dramas. This was the tail end of the 90s and you couldn't even switch on the TV without seeing another Jane Austen adaptation. So when my agent at the time asked me to come up with a book idea over a weekend, I decided I would write a romantic comedy set in Bath about the making of a movie. Being me, I had to have a subplot about a stalker and, also being me, I decided the idea of the female movie star and the hunky male bodyguard was way too predictable and boring. So I switched the sexes around. In Why Do Fools Fall in Love, it's the heroine who is the bodyguard.

Even now I can remember wandering around Bath with a camera and notebook, taking photos and writing down all my ideas. I was even able to watch the filming of A Respectable Trade - a BBC adaptation of the Philippa Gregory bestseller.

Of course as every writer knows, getting the book published was a different matter! There were times when the title came back to haunt me: Why do fools write books! But in the end only two publishers turned it down before it was picked up. I still have a soft spot for this book; It's the only one I've ever considered writing a sequel to!

So I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!

Amazon UK

Amazon USA

Why Do Fools Fall in Love?

She was supposed to keep him out of trouble...

When Shelby Roberts is forced to resign from the police, the only work she can get is as a ‘minder’ to movie star Luke McFadden. Still, spending three weeks on location in the historic city of Bath doesn’t sound too bad.

After all, how much trouble can one actor get into?

To read an extract, click here

Why Do Fools Fall in Love: Behind the Scenes

Related Posts:

The Story Behind the Book: Why Do Fools Fall in Love: (Novelistas Ink)

Why Do Fools Fall in Love on Pinterest

A Room of One's Own

One of my more eccentric 'quirks' is that I have trouble telling people what I do for a living. When cornered, I try to get away with saying, "I work from home" - and hope they'll assume I'm mass knitting tea cosies or something similar. Well, that comment came back to bite me last month; I moved to a new house and found it had no landline and therefore no Internet. How have I managed to stay online? With a mobile Wi-Fi, Internet cafés and the generosity of friends; now I was working anywhere but home!

Ironically, it was at this point Sophie Claire asked if I would contribute to a series of blog posts she was collating for Novelistas Ink, entitled Where I Write. My first thought was wondering whether I could get away with writing a post about the local Waterstones café, which had become my new 'office'. But while writing that post, it got me thinking about where I write and how much writers rely on the Internet for their work - research, keeping in touch with other authors and readers, as well as promotion. The flipside is that the Internet is a huge distraction - which is why writing retreats are so popular. Now I had my own Internet-free writer's retreat - only without the retreat bit!

So, does it really matter whether I work in a café, a spare room or my own study?

I wrote my first book, A Girl's Best Friend at my desk at work during my lunch break. Smoke Gets in Your Eyes was written in the sitting room of our first house (a tiny bungalow) with the computer monitor wedged inside a cupboard, the keyboard on my lap and dance music bouncing off the walls. Why Do Fools Fall in Love was written in several spare rooms, as we moved around the country, from Hampshire to Bath and back again. Breathless was started in Hampshire and finished via another spare room in Wales and then -

And then I claimed my first 'study'! We had moved to a rambling Victorian house, where the dining room was at one end of the building and the kitchen at the other. So I claimed the redundant dining room for my study. I had an entire wall of shelving so, for the first time ever, I could get all my books out of their boxes. Heaven! It had a huge bay window, with a beautiful view of Snowdonia, and I positioned a sofa there - with the idea I could recline and daydream about my plots while I admired the scenery. Of course I never had the time to do that! Incidentally, this was the first time I put a room from my own house into one of my books - my study also became Alicia's in Nemesis. The castle you might just be able to see to the left of this picture is Penrhyn Castle and it became the model for Hurst Castle in the same book.

Then we moved again. My books went back in their boxes and I ended up with another dining room for a study, which was probably the prettiest I've had, with views across the Menai Straits to Mount Snowdon itself.

What have I learned from these upheavals over the years? Well, despite my whinging, it turns out I can write anywhere. It doesn't matter if I'm in a spare room or a café. I don't need a study and I don't need an Internet connection - in fact, as any author will tell you, we get more writing done without it!

It turns out that all I really need to write is ... my laptop and me. 

Read More

Writers Write - What I Really Do All Day

My Writing Process

Keeping it (Un)real - why the best part of being a writer is making stuff up

You Know You're a Writer When ... (for Novelistas Ink)
Where I Write (for Novelistas Ink)

Writing What You Don't Know: Researching Locations

 The first time I heard 'write what you know', I was a teenager working as a typist for the local council. Did that mean I could only write about typists? How incredibly boring! But as it turned out, I 'knew' quite a lot. I knew what it felt like to fall in love, to be dumped, to lose a much loved member of my family - all those life experiences authors recycle into their books. When I crashed my car, I wrote about it in A Girl's Best Friend, along with my own experiences of what it felt like to be betrayed by a friend. When I lived in Bath I wrote about that too (along with all those movies and TV dramas I had seen filmed there), in Why Do Fools Fall in Love. And, being a writer, what I didn't know I made up.

So far, so good. But what happens when you have to write about something you don't know? When you have to do some actual *whisper it* research?

When I was asked to contribute to the Sunlounger anthologies (along with my fellow Novelista, Valerie-Anne Baglietto), the brief was to write a story set in a holiday destination. No problem, I'd just come back from a holiday in Sorrento, I'd write about that (The Indecent Proposal). Well, as it turned out, it's one thing going on holiday somewhere, quite another to have to write a story about it. I dug out my holiday photos and wrote notes about everything I remembered, but it wasn't enough. I had to do some research.

In the old days I'd have headed for the library; nowadays everything is easily available online. Maybe a little too easily, because there is one huge problem with information on the Internet. It's not always accurate. (Shocker!) So I have a rule of three - check facts three times from three different sources.

When it came to writing my story for Sunlounger 2 (The Accidental Proposal) I approached it differently. I'd have my characters arrive in New Orleans as tourists and I worked out an itinerary for them. (You can see my original notes for that here). Of course, that threw up a whole load of new problems. In my original story I had them visiting one of the famous cemeteries at night - it turns out they shut at night! There was a scene where the characters are standing in the street drinking cocktails. In some States that's illegal but fortunately (at the time of writing) it wasn't illegal in New Orleans. There was another scene I'd set beside the tomb of the famous Marie Laveau but vandals had just painted it pink! So, should I make the tomb pink in my story - to prove I'd done my research and show how clever I was? In the end, I decided the authorities were just as likely to repaint it white, and even mentioning the fact that it had ever been pink (no matter how deliciously quirky) it was likely to detract from the story.

So the moral is, always check your facts. It's no good assuming an editor will spot any mistakes in your research - it's not their job! If you're not careful, the first person to spot them will be your reader - and they won't hesitate in pointing them out to you - usually in a one star review.

But no matter how brilliant your research, nothing compares to visiting a location yourself! If you do get that chance, then I recommend taking lots of photos and making lots of notes - and it is the perfect excuse for a holiday!

Online Resources

Google Earth - Perfect for 3D images of locations. Many of cities also have 'street view' allowing you to 'walk' about. Bear in mind the images are often a few years old - if you look for my house, all you'll see is a field!

Pinterest - A great resource for images and you can create mood boards (I've blogged about Pinterest here). The photos often link to blogs.

Travel blogs - A brilliant resource but remember they are opinion pieces, read more than one if you want to view your location through your character's eyes, not the blogger's!

Travel agent websites - for hotels and tourists' itineraries (if you're writing about tourists!)

Tourist Board websites - Obviously!

Keeping It (Un)real

Confession time. The places I write about in my books are not real, although I do occasionally take inspiration from an actual place or building. Hurst Castle in Nemesis, for example, is very loosely based on Penrhyn Castle in North Wales, but I often change elements to suit my plot.

It was never my intention to create my own world and I have written about real places in the past. Why Do Fools Fall in Love is set in Bath, and I've used Sorrento and New Orleans as settings in my Proposal stories.

From a writer's point of view, there is something very satisfying about creating a world of your own. You start off with a character or two. Your characters need friends, lovers, enemies - and somewhere to live. As soon as you've created (and decorated!) their homes, the neighbours will be popping round. So then you have to create places for all these people to visit to stop them getting into trouble - or perhaps, if you're that way inclined, encourage them into it! So that means pubs, clubs, schools, theatres - and before you know it, you've created an entire village and it's all got slightly out of control.

My first book to use an entirely made-up setting was Smoke Gets In Your Eyes. *Spoiler alert*. In it was a sub-plot about corruption in the police force. At the time I was working for the police and I didn't want anyone assuming I was writing about real people and real events. So I created Calahurst. I picked the name because every day on the way to work I passed a road called Cala-something-or-other and I added 'hurst' because I wanted to set my book someplace pretty, and I thought of the New Forest and places like Lyndhurst and Brockenhurst.

I drew a map of my imaginary village. This might sound self-indulgent but when you're writing about a place, real or made up, you really have to get it straight in your head where everything is or, before you know it, coffee shops start moving about. And I did come a cropper in A Girl's Best Friend, when I wanted my heroine to drive down a road which wasn't 'there', and I had to quickly 'build' one!

I've used Calahurst as a setting for my first three books and while I have recycled elements - one house in Smoke Gets in Your Eyes got a new owner in Breathless - I created another village (Port Rell) for my fourth book. And then I got very ambitious and added 'historical' legends - Civil War battles and sieges, and a notorious smuggler who turns up out of nowhere and then vanishes one day in much the same way. I had so much fun with that, I'm doing it all over again for my next two books. I have a new village, Buckley - previously mentioned in Nemesis, and a whole lot of new characters to get into trouble.

It really is the best part of being a writer.

More:

My Pinterest board for Breathless has more photos of Lymington in the New Forest, which helped to inspire Port Rell (along with a few other places!)

My Pinterest board for Nemesis has more photos of Penrhyn Castle


Writing What You Don't Know - Researching Locations - a blog post for Novelistas Ink

The Novelistas

Me with Valerie-Anne Baglietto

On Friday I met up with my fellow Novelistas in a little pub in North Wales. If you follow our blog, you may think the Novelistas do nothing but party, but usually it is for good reason - to celebrate the success of a book or novella being published. A writer's life can be full of rejections and setbacks so we believe it is important to celebrate success, no matter how small, or we'd go crazier than many people think we are already!



Me with Trisha Ashley

So how did I become a Novelista? Are you ready for a long story? My husband's work meant we often had to move. The first move was to a tiny village just outside Bath. I had a small baby, didn't know a soul and felt incredibly isolated. This was the end of the 1990s, before Twitter and Facebook, so I think if I hadn't decided I was going to write a book I would have gone mad. I did love living near Bath though, and it was the inspiration for my second novel Why Do Fools Fall in Love.

So when I moved to Wales ten years ago, the first thing I did was find out where my local group of writers met. As luck would have it, there was one just a five-minute drive down the road!



Anne Bennett and Juliet Greenwood

In the past ten years our group has gone through many changes and there are now ten of us. We write in all genres but mainly romance. Originally we were 'Dragons', in honour of the symbol on the Welsh flag. Worried that this might give people the wrong impression - that we were large, scaly and ate small children for breakfast - we changed it and became the Novelistas.

We now have a blog, Novelistas' Ink, and we're also on Facebook and Twitter, so there is no escaping us at all.

Annie Burrows

We're not a traditional writers' group. We don't critique each other's work. We are a group of friends who happen to write.

Between us we know what it is like to be rejected, traditionally published, dropped, self-published and hit the bestseller lists. We give each other advice, commiserate with bad news and celebrate our successes.

Because that is what friends are for.

The Novelistas:
Left to right: Erika Woods, Beth Francis, Valerie-Anne Baglietto
Trisha Ashley, Juliet Greenwood, Anne Bennett
Louise Marley, Cheryl Lang, Johanna Grassick

Creating Characters: What's in a Name?

I’ve just read a book (a romance) where the hero was called Trevor. He was described as a tall, dark and very hot twenty-something - but I still kept waiting for him to light a pipe.

 

In the book I’d read before that, the hero’s name was Virgil - and all I could think about was Thunderbirds.

So does it really matter what name an author gives their hero?

 

Why Do Fools Fall in Love was turned down by the first publisher it was sent to. The most random reason was that the editor didn’t like the names of the heroes - Ross and Luke. “No one is called Ross,” she told me firmly.

 

Obviously not a Friends fan.

When Disney’s Little Mermaid first came out, I remember feeling very let down that the Prince was called Eric. Whoever heard of a hero called Eric? Ah … Well, if you’ve ever watched True Blood, or read the Charlaine Harris books the TV series is based on, you’ll be familiar with a vampire called Eric Northman. His name suits him fine - mainly because he’s also a 1,000 year old Viking.

In Breathless, Joseph Halfpenny’s daughters have been given the old-fashioned names of Phyllis, Selma and Constance. The Halfpennys are big on both family and history so I had the idea that Joseph named them after his mother and aunts.

 

So the moral of this story is that authors should have the freedom to call their characters whatever they like, even ‘Trevor’.

 

But they’d better have a very good reason.