How Blogger Ruined My Life & How I Am Solving My Problem Creatively

I never give my main "good" email to just anyone. And I never ever put it on the web in any form. Except for my blogger "email your comments" page. And thus the floodgates of spam have been opened. Not the good spam with free pictures of nekkid people, mind you. But the stupid spam. A typical subject line reads "a acquiesce, but eradicable". If I click on it, it crashes my MacMail program and deletes the other messages that it rode in on. Took me awhile to figure out why I hadn't gotten the emails people were waiting for me to answer.

So I took my inspiration from a bad joke (Doctor, it hurts when I do this--so don't do that) and just decided to not click on the messages. Problem solved.

Then, as I looked at my Inbox and saw all the creative spam names, I realised something. Finding names for minor characters in stories is really a pain when you write. Authors are forever telling you their little tricks. "Go through the phone book" and "Drag Queen Game"* are popular solutions. There was even a character on Chicago Hope named after a car commercial. (Lease A Catera became Dr. Lisa Catera.) But here, in my inbox, is a the lemon from which I can make life's lemonade.

So when you read my books don't be surprised to find minor characters called Eli Judd or Kelley Anaya.

*The Drag Queen Game is the name of your first pet and the first street you lived on. I get Nikki Bluffside. Tom gets Lady Bluffside. Tim gets something like Midnight Third. I've clearly got the best one.