Writers make gazillions of choices when they create a story. I spend a great deal of time and thought on the names of my characters, as well as the proper setting for each scene. In fact, I often change the main characters’ names several times as I’m writing the book and get to know them better. This can make things confusing for my critique group. LOL!

I thought my wonderful readers might be interested in how I made some of these decisions for my latest release, The CEO Buys In.

1. Trainor, Archer, Miller: all their names end in an –er sound because I wanted to signal immediately to the reader that these men are doers. They pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps through hard work and their own talents, not by riding on another person’s coattails. My heroes labored long and hard to achieve their success and now they deserve the reward of authentic love.

2. The name of the exclusive club where my three heroes meet is the Bellwether Club. My editor and I went through dozens of possible names for the venue before we hit on the perfect one. Bellwether’s literal meaning is a male sheep that leads the rest of the flock, usually wearing a bell around his neck. However, a bellwether has come to mean a strong person who leads others and also an indicator of future developments or trends. My heroes are all leaders and innovators in their fields so the term fit them well.

3. Each book has the same meeting scene in the bar of the Bellwether Club as its prologue. The action and dialogue remain identical in all three, but the point-of-view changes to the hero of each book. It was a fascinating writing challenge to retell the scene with completely different internalizations each time. The same words can have widely varied interpretations. One character notices body language another doesn’t. And of course, I can always end the scene in a slightly different place. That’s a handy little writer’s trick.

4. The founder and owner of the Bellwether Club is Frankie Hogan. A self-made billionaire herself, she created her club when no other clubs would allow her to join. Now membership in the Bellwether Club is highly sought after amongst the rich and powerful. I wanted to give such a woman a worthy name so the folks at Kindle Love Stories ran a contest for me: nominate a real person in your life whom you admire. Frankie is named after one reader’s grandmother. When the reader was twelve, her 71-year-old grandma took custody of her and raised her. Now that’s making a difference in someone’s life!