Disclaimer with Joy
Writing has been all joy for me. Hitting roadblocks in the storyline and making sure everything lines up can make me want to pull my hair out, but I still enjoy the process. Most fictional books, including mine, have a disclaimer about the names of the characters being fictional and not based on any real person. I thought naming characters would be fun, and it can be, but it can be challenging. I think I can’t name a character by a certain name because I know someone with that name, and what would they think? Does the character have to reflect the real person????? I used variation of names, nicknames, spelling variations or make the character so outlandish there is no way to connect it to someone close to me. Sometimes I do not know where I might take a particular character in the book when I first introduce them in the story. For example, in CROW- I did not know who the murderer was until I actually wrote the chapter. So how do I come up with names- sometimes I pull from real life, heard a name on TV or my favorite is asking my niece for common names for kids her age. A shout out to her coworkers for their contributions. After I published my first book, CROW, I was talking to Angie, a friend of my sister and someone I had only meet a couple of times. Angie was so excited about my book and her joy was infectious and it was so heartwarming that is stuck with me. So much so Angie got a character named after her and where we talked- Detective Angie Decorah makes her first appearance in HAWK. (Spoiler alert, she comes back in PIGEON). Disclaimer… The character and the person are two separate people and I have no idea where I will take this character in future books, but the joy Angie bestowed on a novice writer truly hit me in the heart. Angie, I hope you find it an honor having a character named after you regardless of what happens to the character in future books.
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