In today’s post, I’m going to take you behind the scenes and talk about how I decided on the setting and some of the character names for WONDERS OF SHADOW KEY.
SHADOW KEY
When I sit down to write something new, the setting is often what I think of first. It’s important to me in life and in fiction. The place you’re in determines what you can and can’t do, who you connect with, and how you interact with your environment. There are virtual places, too, but those don’t give you the same sensory experience. Almost everything I write is an attempt to capture what a certain place means to me.
Shadow Key isn’t a place you can find on a map, exactly. It’s a fictional place that’s a combination of islands off the coast of Florida, including some of the Florida Keys off the southern coast, Cedar Key off the west coast, St. George Island in the Panhandle, Howard Park near Tarpon Springs, and Sanibel Island off the southwest coast.
A Florida Key at sunset. Taken from Mallory Square in Key West.
Like a lot of Florida, these places hold a mix of development and wildness. The condos are there, but sometimes you can go behind a dune or walk along a sandy spit and feel like you have the beach to yourself. You can guess how I decided on the name. I wanted something a little dark and mysterious, something that suggests the mysterious “other.” That’s right—a shadow. And key, as Eleanor writes in the first draft of her how-to paper, is another name for an island. It comes from the Spanish word cayo, also a word for an island—usually a small, low one, made from sand piled on top of coral. If you say cayo ten times fast, you can easily hear how English speakers started saying cay or key. So Shadow Key is a small, sandy island built on top of coral and filled with shadows. And by the way, shadow is also a synonym for ghost. Obviously, if Eleanor had thought about it as her family drove to Shadow Key, she might have known she was about to meet ghosts there.
Shadows or ghosts? You decide. Photo by Plato Terentev.
ELEANOR
I’ve learned to give character names a lot of thought early in my writing process because once I pick a name, I get used to it, and then it’s hard to change it. Like if I had a character named Norma and five drafts into the novel decided to do a search-and-replace to change her name to Wanda, I would forever hear Norma in the back of my mind yelling at me for changing her name without permission. Characters do come alive as you write them, you know.
Sometimes I pick character names because I like the sound. Sometimes I pick a name because its meaning suggests the character’s personality. When I first knew I was going to write a ghost story, I thought of one of my favorite “haunting” stories, The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. In that novel, the main character, Eleanor, joins a researcher and a group of guests to investigate a haunted house somewhere in New England. I didn’t try to copy Jackson’s character; I honestly just borrowed the name to put me in the right mood for a ghost novel.
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. Read this late at night. If you dare.
Later, I read that Eleanor comes from the Latin or Greek word for “the bright one” or “shining light.” The Countess mentions this when she first meets Eleanor at the ghost party. So the name also gave me a plot idea: I decided to make Eleanor a “shining light” for the ghost girl lost at sea. She’d make a lighthouse to help guide the girl to shore. Eleanor’s name is also her destiny!
Sheet music for a lighthouse song. Wait, I think that’s Captain Halsey’s ship offshore! Come Back!
MRS. FROBISHER
I knew the name Frobisher from previous research into pirates and explorers, but it also caught my attention because I like the way it sounds. Martin Frobisher was a 16th century English privateer and explorer. A privateer is what you call a pirate working for the government. More about that below. Martin Frobisher is famous for trying to find the Northwest Passage from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean across far northern Canada. Spoiler: didn’t happen. For WONDERS OF SHADOW KEY, I considered making Mrs. Frobisher a descendant of Martin Frobisher. I guess it’s okay to think of her that way, though I didn’t actually write that into the novel. You could also say that Mrs. Frobisher is searching for memories of her life the way Martin Frobisher searched for the Northwest Passage. I’m glad she did discover what happened to her. Also, as I said, I really just like the sound of her name. Say it with me: Frobisher. Fro-bish-er. Froooo-bish-errrrr.
A Portrait of Martin Frobisher by Cronelis Ketel. He’s on the verge of not discovering the Northwest Passage, but at least his pants are roomy.
CAPTAIN HALSEY
Captain John Halsey really was a pirate! He started as a privateer, one of those pirates who work for the government. You see, if a captain received a “letter of marque” from their government, they were legally allowed to attack the ships of certain foreign nations and steal their goods. Governments did this when they were at war. They used letters of marque to turn pirates into an extension of their navy, giving the pirates a license to disrupt trade and outright steal from their enemies. Pirates being pirates, they were happy to oblige.
Here is Captain John Halsey thinking about his dance moves.
Halsey had a nice career attacking both French and Spanish ships. According to Forbes magazine, he became the 9th richest pirate of all time. When his letter of marque expired, he turned into an outright pirate, using Madagascar as his base to attack ships in the Indian Ocean. In one incident, he refused to attack a British ship because he still felt allegiance to his home country. The crew mutinied, but the attack failed and Halsey was reinstated as captain. You see, even pirates sometimes felt patriotism and had certain principles behind their piratical activities.
For more on what we now call the “Golden Age of Pirating,” I highly recommend A General History of the Pyrates, which may or may not have been written by Daniel Defoe, author of the famous shipwreck tale, Robinson Crusoe. Can you tell I love pirates?
Anyway, I took a few ideas from the historical Captain Halsey for my fictional one. My Captain Halsey dreams of finding his crew again and returning to Madagascar for retirement. I don’t know if the real Halsey danced and sang, but I would bet on it. Also, it’s reported in A General History of the Pyrates that Madagascar was briefly home to the pirate republic known as Libertatia, where pirates could live freely and democratically among their stolen wealth. Every pirate’s dream. Too bad Captain Halsey is still waiting for his Uber to get there.
Let me know if there are any other characters or places in WONDERS OF SHADOW KEY you’d like to know about! And if you have stories about naming your own characters (or pets or siblings), I’d love to hear them.
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