Often times I will have moments of inspiration while doing mundane chores. The other day, it happened while I was in the shower. This is a well documented phenomenon that most people have experienced. But strangely enough it was completely unheard of to my kids, ages 7 and 9. They were watching me fervently scribbling in my notebook during breakfast and the older one asked me what I was writing. I said that I had a moment of story revelation in the shower and I had to write it down before I forgot it.
He looked at me like I were crazy and then he laughed. Nice one dad, you’re such a crack up. I asked him and his brother if they ever thought of anything while in the shower. Nope. Not a thing. Well, I said it’s not such a crazy thing. They didn’t believe me. Preferring to giggle about it. Kids.
This is not a spoiler, well, I hope not anyway. But the idea that came to me that I needed to write down was the personal history of my main character for my WIP – Starforgers. Her name is Devon Ardel and her mother and father are also briefly featured in the story. Her mother is a distinguished senator from Prahran and her father is the head of the Stellar Rangers on Prahran. The thing is, I had already given her mother the name, Gail Constantine and her father the name Joh Solano. I really liked both names, but their daughter’s last name was Ardel. Too many last names, unless the mother was using her maiden name and Devon had taken the name of a husband.
That works, but I didn’t know that Devon was ever married. In retrospect this seems obvious, but it’s something that I never had given much thought before. Since I have never mentioned that Devon was married in all the short stories I’ve written about her over the years, loyal readers would not be aware of it either. I know I have mentioned her mother’s name, but not her father’s name in previous stories.
Anyway, it appears that Devon was once married and her husband is now dead. She chose to keep his sir name because after he died, she joined the Stellar Rangers and didn’t want to be linked to her famous Ranger father. She of course wanted nothing to do with her honorable mother either, but that’s another issue for the character. My next task will be to find out who her husband was and what he did for a living. Not to mention how he died. I already have a pretty good idea, but of course that would be to much spoiler information.