My good friend Helene Boudreau is here today to talk about her place setting names in her Real Mermaids series! I for one am quite excited by the interesting tailspin she's put on the series!
I have been known to pull character names from my spam folder but my characters in the Real Mermaids series don’t have quite the same dubious origin. They came about as happy accidents while I wrote, with tweaks here and there, and most of their names don’t have any particular significance.
Instead, I found the names of places in the books have a lot more significance to me.
Hyde’s Department Store: was named after my manuscript critique partner Natalie Hyde. She has critiqued all three books in the Real Mermaids series and I even dedicated the second book, Real Mermaids Don’t Hold Their Breath, to her.
Port Toulouse: is the old French name for the town of St. Peter’s, Cape Breton. It has a boat canal, which connects the Atlantic Ocean to a fresh water lake and we used to sail there in my father’s fishing boat. That is the town which inspired the setting for the book.
Talisman Lake: is inspired by the name of the street where I live now.
Dooley’s Drugstore: is the name of the pharmacy where I bought my first Feminine Hygiene Products just like Jade did in book #1.
Bridget’s Diner: The jumping off point (pardon the pun) for this place name was that I envisioned a diner near a bridge just like the ice cream parlour called The Tasty Treat in St. Peter’s where we used to stop on the way to the beach. ‘Bridge’ morphed into ‘Bridget’ and it became an important meeting place in book #1 and took center stage when Jade and Cori started working at the seasonal ice cream parlour in book #2. It continues to be an important place for my characters to interact and connect in book #3.
Oh, and FYI regarding character names, the mer-baddies from Talisman Lake, Finalin and Medora, were indeed names pulled from my spam folder.
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