I realise it has been quite some time since I was last seen updating my novelist blog. But things have been a bit hectic with episodes of depression, writer’s block and also my temporary return to salaried work.

The monotonous nature of being a receptionist has finally reawakened my creativity, and I finally put fingers to keyboard on an idea I have been mulling over for the best part of a year now. It isn’t the only new book I have started — it has been one of many things I wanted to work on but haven’t had the inspiration to do so. These also included a foray into fantasy which I have been working on for my writer’s group, as well as the romantic crime drama I mentioned before. And, of course, there’s the next instalment of The Berylford Scandals, which is entitled Sin & Secrecy. That is already written, for the most part, it needs a proper read-through and editing to make total sense and tie in with its predecessor.

But writing about the lives of Lady Vyrrington, Mrs Urmstone, Mrs Haffisidge and Abel Stirkwhistle can wait for a while — in truth, I’m still sick of the sight of the characters. Instead, may I present my new, work-in-progress title:

Just in case any of you are wondering — no, it isn’t a rip-off of The Pianist. The title seemed fitting, that’s all.

In my first jump into thriller writing, I’m transporting you out from Regency England over to Berlin, 1943, in the heart of World War II. To one of the only still-functioning hotels in the capital, whose guests have no shortage of intrigue. And neither do the staff.

I developed the characters over the course of the last year, taking inspiration from the appearances and personalities from the people around me at the time. I hope they won’t mind my saying so — this time, it was my colleagues at Nationwide who inspired the looks and moods of the characters in You Can Hear Chopin from the Attic. 

This is only five chapters in, so far, so I won’t give away too much. But it will deal primarily with the persecution of the mentally ill by the Nazis at that time (one of Hitler’s own relatives among them). It also discusses the largely undocumented subject of the hotel industry at that time. Surprising as it is, business was often booming! It will be fun to research.

Chapter samples and more will follow, as well as other writer-related news.

I have now sold at least 65 copies of my debut novel in the 15 weeks that it has been available. Quite an achievement in itself, when you consider that most self-published authors don’t sell 50 copies of their first book at all. For the most part, the response has been very positive, though many readers have come up to me and remarked on how their vocabulary has expanded since reading.

The recurring point of “criticism” (for want of a better word) has been the characters’ names, which some have viewed as complicated. So I am dedicating this next post to discussing how complicated character names are rife within literature and that mine are on par with, if not easier to read than some authors.

As has been discussed before, several great 18th, 19th and 20th century authors influenced my literary style when it came to writing The Berylford Scandals: Lust & Liberty and the related works that came before and after it. Of all of them, two stick out in my mind in having unorthodox, whimsical and downright weird character names. They are Charles Dickens and Mervyn Peake.

When it came to writing the first full Berylford novel, starting back in 2008, I began with a list of 40 characters, many of whom I renamed as time went on, particularly as their surnames were swapped with those of my extended family. To give a few examples, Whitlock, Osborne, Gwynne and Warwick. Others, such as Gussage, are named after areas in Dorset, just as J.K. Rowling named some of her better-known characters after places in England (think Dursley in Gloucestershire, Snape in Suffolk and Flitwick in Bedfordshire).

And then there are those that are just downright odd and came from my imagination, and were partly influenced by those two aforementioned novelists: Dickens and Peake. Any fan of literature will know that Dickens’ characters all had quite characteristic and complex names, some of the more complicated to read on a page that strike me include Tulkinghorn and Jarndyce from Bleak House, Flintwinch and Tattycoram from Little Dorrit, Grewgious from The Mystery of Edwin Drood and Pecksniff and Chuzzlewit from Martin Chuzzlewit. The same goes for surnames like Barquentine and Prunesqualor from Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast books.

Upon reading those, would it be fair to say that surnames such as Vyrrington, Haffisidge and Rudgerleigh are less-complicated to read? I would say so. Having said that, those three surnames underwent numerous changes across the eight-year writing process for Lust & Liberty. Only one major family retained their surname from start to finish, and is definitively very Dickensian or Peakesque. Stirkwhistle. I don’t remember how that name came into my head when it did nearly ten years ago, but naming one of my favourite characters to write — Abel Stirkwhistle — I could not imagine him being called anything else.

If all characters in all novels set in a real-life place were given mundane names, how would they be memorable or unique, not to mention representative of the author’s style?

By popular demand, I am going to dedicate some future posts to telling the story behind creating some of my more favourite characters in my Berylford universe; how they first came to be in the stories and what or who influenced them.