Every Picture Tells a Story...

Happy Father's Day.

Dad and I 

I've been playing around with images today over on Pinterest, so I thought I'd include a picture that's relevant to today.

My Dad used to carry a copy of this photo in his wallet when I was small, and after he died it was the one picture I especially wanted, but it was mislaid.

A few years later one of my brother's found this copy of that same picture and gave it to me, so it's now in a small frame on the windowsill above my desk.

The photo was taken by my mum, and on the back it says 31/7/1962, so we were either on holiday, or it was one of our regular summer Sunday trips to the seaside.

Even though the photo is black and white I can still remember my blow-up plastic boat. The outside was pillar-box red and the inside white. It took quite a bit of puff to blow it up... I've no idea what I have in the boat with me- possibly a blow up beach ball.

My Dad volunteered for the army at the start of the Second World War, and he was one of the many soldiers who were evacuated from Dunkirk; and having researched the regimental history, it's likely he was taken off the beach- he couldn't swim, and as far as I know he was very much older before he did learn, so this picture has a lot of meaning to me...

Every picture does tell a story...

Now to Get On With the Story...

I've been working on possible names since my last blog post, and being able to put variations into Google has been very helpful.

A rose by any other name...

If you haven't read my last post, it might help to explain my dilemma.

I had a list of first names that seemed to be possibles for the ex-girlfriend/model character in my contemporary romance.

All I can say is there are a lot of models out there and finding an original name is tough work. All the ones that I thought would be few, were quite the opposite.

Yesterday I was at the stage of reverting to Suzi/Suzy if I couldn't come up with anything else, but I persisted and found two possibles, but whether they would work would depend upon the right surname.

This was where the Behind the Name website proved useful. I was able to bring up an alphabetical surname list - my own is not on it!

Finally I had five potential surnames that would work with either first name- I'm not revealing which two until it's finished and ready for publishing. :-)

Over the last few days as I've searched for her name, I've also been concentrating on her role in the story and discovered more about her. I  now understand her motives- which is important.

Sadly I had to exclude some surnames because combined together with my possible first names,  I found there were models with those names!

It was using an alternate spelling of one of my Christian name choices that made all the difference, and it's always worth checking for spelling variations that might make the name slightly different from usual - there may just be fewer people using that variation.

And best of all, the final name choice does not clash with any of my other characters names.

So I can now get on with her bio and back into writing - I'm really looking forward to writing the upcoming scenes...







Image courtesy of Tim Seed & www.freedigitalphotos.net