Writing is more than running with the muse.  The muse is a showoff and runs easily while I clumsily try to maintain pace.  What trips me up is naming characters.  It can be an arduous task.  To be less confusing, I try not to use a name more than once.  Yes, I have slipped up with having a Mike and a Michael in the series and will admit to giving Whitney and Ted the same surname of Martin (oops).

In my defense, I have over 530 characters in the Haunted Series alone.  So when a new character - even one that has the reading time of less than a minute – appears, I’m stopped.  My fingers cease to fly over the keys.  Maybe I should have said pound the keys.  I’m hardly graceful.  Sorry, digression is also a problem. 

I feel I must take a few things into account before bestowing a name.  Where do they live?  What is their nationality?  How old are they?  And does their name mean something?