Tuesday, 20 February 2018

Welcoming Bella Osborne to the blog

Today I am absolutely delighted to welcome wonderful Bella Osborne to the blog. Fellow RNA member Bella is always easy to spot at RNA events because she wears such beautiful and elegant dresses! Today she is here to talk to us all about the importance of picking character names and tell us all about the second instalment of her new title, Ottercombe Bay, which is released today.




What’s in a name? – Coming up with character names.

 I love the part of the writing process where you get to name your characters. For me it’s a really fun part because it’s usually very early on in the embryonic idea stage. Sometimes a plot thread will come to me first but my main characters are usually not too far behind. Naming them is a very important stage for me - they have to feel right. Occasionally they just fall into place as they did with Ottercombe Bay. My lead female character, Daisy, barged into my subconscious and her name just popped into my head. I already knew that her parents had been bohemian individuals so naming her after a flower seemed likely.

For other characters I needed to do more digging to uncover the names that felt right for them. Cue lots of trawling of baby name databases, archives and research on traditional names from the West Country as my story is set in a fictional Devon seaside town. I was thrilled when I hit on the name of Pasco for one of my secondary characters. It is a traditional Cornish name and although my story is set over the border in Devon I felt it fitted my character so well. You can almost hear the accent when you say the name Pasco.

Once I’ve got the main character’s names sorted I can progress with the story sometimes leaving out the names of minor characters until I hit upon the right one. Instead of a name I put XXX so it’s easy to locate later on when I need to change it. For book five I have left the names of my heroine’s parents until the very end of the first draft, having toyed with a number of options, but as none of them felt right I left it until I knew them both better and this really helped find names that worked with their personalities.

 I also have lots of fun choosing the names of the animals in my stories. It is just as important to me that they have the right name. The black pug in Ottercombe Bay has a big personality, bags of attitude and some hoodlum tendencies so Bugsy Malone was the perfect fit. I hope my readers agree.


All about Ottercombe Bay

 Daisy Wickens has returned to Ottercombe Bay, the picturesque Devon town where her mother died when she was a girl. She plans to leave as soon as her great uncle’s funeral is over, but Great Uncle Reg had other ideas. He’s left Daisy a significant inheritance – an old building in a state of disrepair, which could offer exciting possibilities, but to get it she must stay in Ottercombe Bay for twelve whole months.

With the help of a cast of quirky locals, a few gin cocktails and a black pug with plenty of attitude, Daisy might just turn this into something special. But can she ever hope to be happy among the ghosts of her past?




All about Bella...


Bella has been jotting down stories as far back as she can remember but decided that 2013 would be the year that she finished a full length novel. She’s now written four romantic comedies and been shortlisted twice for the RNA Contemporary Romantic Novel of the Year.

Bella's stories are about friendship, love and coping with what life throws at you.

She lives in The Midlands, UK with her husband, daughter and a cat who thinks she’s dog. When not writing she’s usually eating custard creams and planning holidays.

Buy the book...

UK Amazon link: https://goo.gl/SaNvS3
US Amazon link: https://goo.gl/Tp5hcP


Find Bella online...


Twitter: @osborne_bella

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