My cousin is reading my latest novel, Catherine’s Story. She’s excited to see the familiar names of our family used in the story. She says, it’s like a family reunion. She asks me if I knew that Mary Catherine, one of the lead characters in the story, was her mother’s (my great aunt) full name. I told her I did not, but now thinking about it, I do remember. I’m glad, because I like using the names of people who have touched my life in my stories. It’s neat for me to know that they live on, even if their characters and lives are totally different than the book, after all I am making it up as I go along.

But again it is cool to see their names in print in my books. Like Chip, the grandfather in Catherine’s Story,  comes from when I was a kid and he was the man who lived next door to us. His wife’s name was Joy and his kids were Sandy, Candy, Tandy and Randy. Who knows maybe one day I will use their names. I have a close friend who pointed out to me that I used both her and her husband’s names as not so nice people. Ha! Did not mean to do that… Next time I will remember to choose names of people I don’t know for those characters…:)

I enjoy taking some of our history and infusing it into the story. Like Aunt Helen, in Catherine’s Story. I did have an aunt named Helen who did live in Europe, who was beautiful and creative. But unlike the real Aunt Helen and the Aunt Helen in my story, their lives were very different.

Sometimes I choose unusual names for my characters,  like the names of my current pets…Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.  In my first novel, Sunny’s first baby was named Crescent Blue and later her twins boys were named River and Ocean.

Who knows what I will come up with next… 🙂