Visit Connie Berry's website.What's in a name?
Kate Hamilton got her name so long ago I can’t remember why I chose it, other than the fact that her late husband’s Scottish roots play a role in the plot of the first book, A Dream of Death. For my main characters, Kate and Tom, I chose simple names I liked and thought I could live with for a long time.
The real fun has been choosing names for the secondary characters.
Lady Barbara Finchley-fforde, for example—the last survivor of the Finchleys of Finchley Hall, a family with eleventh-century roots. When Lady Barbara saved the Hall from creditors by marrying the wealthy son of a Welsh family, Cedru fforde (yes, lower-case double ff’s), her father insisted their surnames be hyphenated, an affectation often associated with the British upper class.
The name I gave Kate’s friend and mentor in the antiquities trade, Ivor Tweedy, combines two elements. Ivor is a Norse name, a hold-over from the Viking incursion into East Anglia, where the book is set. The surname Tweedy has a Dickensian quality, implying eccentricity. Ivor is...[read on]
The Page 69 Test: The Art of Betrayal.
My Book, The Movie: The Art of Betrayal.
Q&A with Connie Berry.
--Marshal Zeringue
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