The Cows Come to Roost?

The blog is getting the last dregs of my day tonight. I hope it ends up being coherent.

The majority of my day was spent serving the needs of my middle sister. Her husband accepted a position in another town several months ago and has been driving an hour and ahalf to work every day - one way. They wanted to allow their youngest son to finish out the school year and spend some time doing a little fix-up on their current home in order to gain the best price. Plus my sister will have to quit her job, for which she already drives out of town.

So she and I have spent alot of time looking online at homes and scouting out properties as I've been down there visiting. Over spring break we spent a day there. During the week of the family reunion we took a day to look at tax properties.

Not a pretty sight, if I do say so myself. But we did manage to find one of the properties she'd seen online back in March that she'd liked. They scheduled to see the inside. I have not.

So their new town will actually be quite a bit closer to me and a nice little jaunt down the highway. Since she's getting down to brass tacks, we spent a good portion of the day on the phone and reviewing some corporate owned homes that they hope to get in to see and perhaps make a low-ball offer. I plan to drive down next week while my son is gone so she and I can spend the day looking at the homes she decides upon from the list we successfully whittled down today.

Whew!

Then the remainder of my evening I spent delving into the world of my new book. Don't know about you, but when it comes to my characters I have to choose a name that really fits with their personality. Normally when I start thinking about who my character is, a name will pop into my head, I'll wallow in it then feel very comfortable as the name settles in.

For the last several days I've been having a devil of a time coming up with an appropriate name for my new detective. Instead of the name sinking into the skin of my character it seems to more bounce off the surface as if struck by rigor mortis. In all my years of writing, I've never struggled so to find a good name for a character.

So I called upon some trusted friends from my critique group.

Gary offered me names like Dallas or Smokey (gee, thanks!), but Tonya hit a home run. I ended up relishing one of the first names she came up with, however with a more exotic spelling, then pulled the last name from another offering she'd thrown against the wall. The two fit perfectly.

So Detective Shaun Landry is born. His opening scene was difficult to write because of the events, but I settled into his psyche so nicely that he already feels like a trusted friend.

Thanks again, Tonya!

Now it's off to bed before the cows come home to roost. Wait a minute...