I have my 75,000+ Baby Names  book out again.

If you ever want to make a man’s heart skip, just leave that thing on the edge of your desk. I get the book out several times a year, always eliciting a look of panic from my husband no matter how many times I explain that I’m only using it for work.

Typically when Baby Names  comes out I’m starting a story, but right now I’m finishing one. This is the handy-dandy reference that helps me name characters, which isn’t nearly as easy as you might think. This time around, for instance, I’m not naming a character but renaming one after starting out with a name that sounds way too similar to a character in another author’s story. (It wouldn’t matter, really, but we’re in an anthology together and don’t want to confuse readers!)

What’s in a name, anyway?

If you’re a reader or writer of fiction, you probably know the answer. A lot.

So many memorable characters have cool sounding names: Roarke, Scarpetta, Holden. Frequently, names in fiction are chosen to conjure up images. (Han Solo, Clarice Starling, Bella Swan, to mention a few). But there’s more to choosing a character name than imagery, unfortunately. Oftentimes it takes me longer to come up with the right name than the opening scene.

Many of my characters aren’t born at the beginning of a book, but in the middle of one. I’ll be in the midst of a scene and boom, new character walks in and I have to figure out what to call him. Call him Sam and get on with it, you might think. Problem is, the secondary characters could end up having their own books down the road. And whatever name I pulled out of the sky on that fateful day, I’m stuck with it for months and months. So it had better be good, heroic-sounding, worthy of a 100,000-word story.

Here are just a few criteria I think about: How does the name sound? Is it too similar to other names in my story? (Anyone who has ever read a book populated with guys named Jake, Jared, and Jacob knows how annoying this can be. Why not just toss in a woman named Jaymee and drive the reader completely nuts?)

So I make an effort not to have all my characters names start with the same letter.  Also, I try to avoid names that end with “s” because that just gives me grief later when I’m making possessives. And that’s when the detective spotted it! On the rain-drenched sidewalk was Amy Meyers’s bloody scarf….

Usually I come up with a first name simply by thinking about my character and consulting my baby names book. Pairing it with a last name is where the trouble starts.

Here’s how hero-naming often goes for me: I think of something fabulous. It’s simple, macho-sounding without being over the top. The name works well with my heroine. Her  name doesn’t sound kooky with it, should they get married someday (I don’t want to end up with a Sunny Skye or something). At last, I have the perfect name for my leading man. I turn to my computer, hop onto Google, and . . .

Find out he’s a porn star. Or an NFL quarterback. Or a seventy-year-old radio personality whom I’ve never heard of but millions of people listen to daily.

Sigh. Back to the drawing board. And so it goes until finally I get it right.

How do you think of names? Besides my baby names book, I use the phone book, the social security web site, the newspaper. If you’re not a writer, how did you come up with names for your kids? Your pets?

I’m looking for fresh ideas here! Share your stories and one commenter will win a free book. In honor of this weekend’s Romantic Times convention, I’m giving away a signed copy of UNTRACEABLE, which was nominated for an RT Reviewers’ Choice Award.

Good luck and have a great weekend!

It’s amazing to me how I can look back in my life and not remember when things happened, or even that they happened, but I can remember entire seasons of certain TV shows as if I had lived them myself. (Or entire plots of books I’ve only read once, but which had a profound affect on me.) It’s a symptom of this world we live in now–this go go go all of the time, where we only decompress briefly in front of a TV screen or in the pages of a book… rarer to take time out just to sit on the porch or visit with friends.

On the other hand, I had some of the best lessons in life from the TV that I grew up with, and sometimes, I have a hard time remembering that these people aren’t actual crazy relatives that came and camped out on my sofa for a while.

My earliest memories are of the Red Skelton comedy show. (Which I am almost sure was something I saw in re-runs.) I don’t remember a lot about him–but that he was hysterical to me as a kid. I’m almost afraid to go back and watch them now, for fear it’ll ruin the memory. Then there was the Lucille Ball shows–which was also re-runs. Lucy, of course, was incredibly funny, though the one thing about Lucy’s humor that didn’t quite resonate for me was that she was always funny as a victim — of circumstance, of poor choices and cloudy judgment, or of trying to assert what she wanted to do in the face of a male dominated society. I actually more admired the woman behind the comedienne, the real Lucy, who was the brains behind so much of that success.

After Lucy, there was the Carol Burnette show. (I know… with all of this, I’m dating myself.) I liked Carol, and some of the skits. I really mostly enjoyed when they ended up cracking each other up and couldn’t hardly continue with the scene. (The show was live, I believe, at least in the beginning.)

What I didn’t realize was that I was learning a lot about comedy as a kid when I watched these shows. I became the smart ass teenager and learned to out-think the bullies around me. These shows taught me about comedic timing and pacing and it was obvious when a skit (or a scene) went on too long, when they tried for one funny too many. It was one of the best educations regarding scene writing (classic conflict vs. goals).

The 80s were and odd time for me. I went from being a teenager to being a college student to suddenly being a married woman who had a kid. Bang, just like that, I was suddenly supposed to be all grown up and aware of the world, and I was barely aware of my own neighborhood, so suddenly confined to that life of young (broke) stay-at-home mom. There were almost no other young people on my block, and we lived in a house that was sooooooo desperate for remodeling, it looked like Boo Radley’s house. Actually, it was probably worse than Boo Radley’s house. At any rate, there were rare moments when I got to watch TV–pre VCR recorders and DVRs–and one of my favorite shows was Designing Women. For one thing, they were (mostly) smart women, who were funny, who cared about each other and the issues of the world. They talked about things you’d love to sit and talk about with your friends, and they fought and made up and got cranky and fed up and eat up with the stupids and filled with forgiveness and I loved that show.

But the stand-out for me was Julia Sugarbaker, played by Dixie Carter. As written by Linda Bloodworth-Thompson, Julia was one of those iconic characters which was made to be remembered. As played by Dixie Carter, she was etched into our culture with a smile and charm and an absolute steely nerve and delivery of lines that made you want to be her. Dixie’s own class and comedic timing, grace and razor sharp delivery were all impeccable, and she became one of my heroes. She was proof that you could be Southern and smart, classy yet with rapier wit, liberal in some things, conservative in others. She wasn’t a mouthpiece for feminism, and yet, she was one of the strongest feminist on TV at the time.

I became aware, then, of just how much of an impact a fictional character could have in my life. There were conflicts I faced better because of her, arguments I won because of her, choices I made because of her influence, and I felt like she helped me grow up into the womanhood I had been thrust into. I have three aunts, all of whom lived far enough away that I wasn’t close to any one of them, and Julia Sugarbaker sort of stood in for that figure, that wise, funny, smart ass aunt who gave you the answers you didn’t always want to hear, but did it in such a way that you didn’t mind.

She was the forerunner of the kind of characters I would fall in love with, the ones I’d want to write. The Bobbie Fayes and now, in the new one, Avery.

The nice thing was, she seemed to have found happiness, with a loving husband and two daughters. She was thriving in her career, still, and just as sharp as ever at age 70. My only hope is that I one day write a character who has as much an affect on someone as Julia Sugarbaker had on me.

Thank you, Linda Bloodworth-Thompson, for writing her, and to Dixie Carter for bringing her to life. She will be missed.

So how about you — what fictional characters did you grow to love, or fall in love with? Who had an impact on your life?

(p.s. — I will be checking in between flights, as I am on my way to Phoenix, for the Desert Rose Conference. I’ll be teaching two workshops there: (1) Voice — what it is, isn’t, and how to hone your own and (2) Sex Scenes — the when, what, how, where, and why of them. Plus pop quizzes and prizes. I’ll comment here throughout the day as I can!)

We talk a lot about heroes, heroines, and villains. But there’s a character that in many ways and in many stories is just as important as the protagonist and antagonist–and that’s the sidekick. The pal. The mentor. A secondary character who is important to either the protagonist or the story itself–or better yet? Both.

I was thinking about this today when I posted something over at the Romantic Times message board about my character Dr. Hans Vigo. Hans was a throwaway character in my first trilogy, someone my FBI agents could call up for information. No one I had plans to develop, but after talking to him on the phone (through my characters!) I had a picture of him. Late 40s, a bit on the short side, a tad overweight–but still fit. A mentor. A good guy. The go-to guy. My know-it-all-if-I-need-anything-from-Quantico FBI dude.

But he sort of stuck around.

In FEAR NO EVIL I brought him back, a profiler–but also because he was on the East Coast and I needed someone to interview a potential suspect/witness in New York–someone Quinn Peterson trusted. Hans. No brainer. I met him. Big mistake. I liked him.

So when I was writing KILLING FEAR, I brought him in on the page. It seemed . . . right at the time. And, to be honest, I planned on killing him in the Prison Break Trilogy. I remember writing my agent that he was going to have to die. But dammit, my villain didn’t kill him, and picked another secondary character I also liked. Hans survived. And again, in TEMPTING EVIL, I thought he would die. He didn’t. He grew on me. Surely he would be dead by the end of PLAYING DEAD. But . . . how could I kill a guy who’s been through so many of my books? More than half of them?

In SUDDEN DEATH, Hans takes on a major secondary role. He’s no longer simply a Herald or even a simple mentor–he’s complex, he’s my heroine’s Mentor and my hero’s Threshold Guardian. He’s pivotal to the story and yet also a shapeshifter as his motivations change over the course of the story. And finally–finally!–I learn why he’s not only an FBI agent, but so dedicated and driven and amicable. And the most fun I think I had was role-reversal–in the No Evil series, Dillon Kincaid sought out Hans’s advice; in SUDDEN DEATH, Hans is the one calling Dillon for input. I’ll admit, I loved bringing them both back.

Secondary characters are crucial to the story. I can go on and on about archetypes like the mentor and the shapeshifter and the trickster, but the secondary characters that really stick with me are those loyal to the hero or heroine . . . even when battling their own personal demons.

Some of my favorite secondary characters:

Obi Wan Kenobi . . . need I say more? He is the epitome of a mentor to young Luke, sharing with him what he needs to know, but no more. Why? Because he knows that too much information will send Luke down the wrong path. He’s wise, but he’s still struggling with past failures. (The single best character in the later Star Wars films–the prequels–was Obi Wan. They are worth watching primarily for his character growth and development, and is IMO the best consistency with the original.)

Dr. Henry Jones (Sean Connery) in THE LAST CRUSADE. It’s always a tough call whether I like #3 or #1 in the Indiana Jones movies better. #1 had better villains and love interest; but #3 had a terrific story (the holy grail) stronger character development of Indy. I also love his relationship with his father. Ok, I love Sean Connery. But as a catalyst for Indy’s growth, I found his character a perfect major secondary character.

Mark Wahlberg in THE DEPARTED. Okay, I love, love, love this movie. Wahlberg played the borderline psycho cop perfectly. His potential (and ultimately his final act) was foreshadowed brilliantly, and frankly, I don’t know if just any actor could have pulled this off. I didn’t like him. But I completely understood him and his choices and decisions were so perfectly in character I felt that full circle click that I don’t get in many films anymore. (To digress . . . I think THE DEPARTED was the best cast film of the early 21st century.)

Capt. Renault in CASABLANCA. Not wholly likable, but you can’t hate him. You understand him, even if you wouldn’t do what he does. But at the end, he lives up to his character. He was subtle throughout the movie–he never took center stage–but every scene he was in was a perfect foreshadow for the ending.

Joan Cusack in WORKING GIRL. As Cyn, she was the typical “buddy.” A best friend who was quirky but gave sound advice (often with comedic overtones.) She was the comic relief. “Sometimes I dance around the house in my underwear. That doesn’t make me Madonna. Never will.” She’s also the threshold guardian to Tess McGill, but not because she doesn’t want her to succeed–Cyn loves her best friend and everything she says and does is because she cares about her feelings and her future. She was a bit over-the-top, but in a secondary character you can get away with doing and saying things you can’t do or say with your protagonist.

–Tangent. In FATAL SECRETS I have a secondary character, Charlie Cammarata, who is not a nice guy. He was fired from Immigration, he did some awful things to the heroine–but his motivations were not bad. They were misguided and he was wrong and he doesn’t know it, but ultimately, by the end you (I hope!) understand him. However, he can say things that the heroine thinks and believes but because she lives within the law, she will never act on them. It’s one of those deep moral questions: if you could kill someone evil and get away with it, would you? Charlie would not hesitate to say yes; my heroine would waver, but ultimately, say no. But using secondary characters to highlight major moral dilemmas is a common use, and when done well, does make you think. How far would you go?

I could go on and on . . . in television, there are more clear-cut examples. Walt (the buddy) in VERONICA MARS; Det. Tutola (ICE-T) in LAW & ORDER SVU–he usually says what I’m thinking; Norm & Cliff in CHEERS. These characters take the show to the next level; without them, you don’t have the depth (or humor.) In fiction, JD Robb has, hands down, the best secondary characters in any series I’ve read. Delia and McNab anyone? Sommerset? Mavis? Without them, it would just be another police procedural; with them, the books are golden.

The most important thing about secondary characters is that they need to be pushing the protagonist to reach for the brass ring (i.e. a cautionary protagonist may need a more aggressive, though sometimes reckless, partner); or be the mentor, the wise man or woman who the protagonist seeks . . . but at the pivotal time, they are unavailable (dead, kidnapped, gone home); or they are a catalyst. They make things happen while they themselves don’t change. But a positive secondary character will always have the protagonist’s best interests in mind. (SAM — LORD OF THE RINGS. He never lost sight of Frodo’s conflict or quest, he was loyal and steadfast. Without Sam, Frodo would not have survived. But it wasn’t Sam’s story.) They may not do the right thing, but they’ll always do it for the right reason.

So share some of your favorite secondary characters and why. What makes them good for the protagonist? Why are they strong characters?