Blog Tour: The Little Teashop of Broken Hearts - Guest Post by Jennifer Joyce

Today is my stop on the Blog Tour for Jennifer Joyce's latest book, The Little Teashop of Broken Hearts, and she is sharing with us how she names her characters when she starts a new story:


Whenever I start plotting a new book, I always have my faithful baby names book on hand. I bought the book years ago for 50p – and it’s certainly earned its money back since! It’s a little tatty now, but I can’t imagine not having it by my side to help with naming characters. I use it in several ways: simply searching for the perfect name that suits my character, scouring the meanings for the ideal fit, or opening a random page and selecting a name from the list (I do this more often for minor characters).

Other tools I use for naming characters are google searches of popular baby names for the year when the character was born, or keeping an eye out for names that catch my eye on the credits of film and TV shows. As you’d expect, naming the main characters of a book usually takes the longest to get right, but with The Little Teashop of Broken Hearts, naming the main characters was more straight forward.

This time, I put my baby names book down and instead googled cake as I wanted to give my main character – plus her colleagues – names that would match their cake-filled teashop setting. This was not another excuse to research cake. 

Not. At. All.

Inspired by the cakes I found, I ended up with main character Maddie (full name Madeleine, after – you’ve guessed it – madeleines) and teashop colleagues Mags – short for Magdalena(s) and Victoria (of the sponge variety). I briefly considered naming all characters inspired by cake, but I’d have soon run out of suitable options and I’m not sure ‘Battenberg’, ‘Fondant Fancy’ or ‘Birthday’ would have worked quite so well!

Jennifer Joyce is a writer of romantic comedies who lives in Manchester with her husband and their two daughters. Her latest novel, The Little Teashop of Broken Hearts is out now. You can find out more about Jennifer and her books on:

Facebook: www.facebook.com/jenniferjoycewrites 
Twitter: www.twitter.com/writer_jenn 
Blog: www.jenniferjoycewrites.co.uk

About the Book:

Title: The Little Teashop of Broken Hearts
Author: Jennifer Joyce
Published: February 7th 2017 by HQ Stories

Blurb: A deliciously charming romance, perfect for fans of Caroline Roberts, Jane Linfoot and Debbie Johnson.

From fairy cakes to first dates!

Maddie Lamington’s dreams are crumbling around her. If she doesn’t come up with a plan to save her little teashop on Sweet Street soon, it might be too late…

So when she sees how the perfect apple crumble brings together her lonely father and faithful customer Birdie, inspiration strikes: she’ll set up a dating night involving all her sweetest bakes.

Luckily, seriously gorgeous Caleb is on hand to help sprinkle a little magic – and a lot of sugar! Could one night of scrumptious first dates fix Maddie’s heartbreak and save her beloved teashop, too?

         

A booklover from Barcelona currently living in Munich, who enjoys reading, baking, travelling and crafting.

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3 comentaris

  1. Anne4 March 2017 at 11:28

    The book sounds lovely, especially with all the cake involved. I always find naming characters a real chore and I picked up a baby names book many years ago too. I've not actually got anything worth publishing yet but I do enjoy writing stories.
    #TOTT

    ReplyDelete
  2. Unknown4 March 2017 at 13:38

    Sounds a good read. I love the cake themed names. Fondant Fancy sounds like a good name for a character in an erotica book lol.
    Great interview. I love hearing how authors work.
    #ToTT

    ReplyDelete
  3. Shaz Goodwin4 March 2017 at 15:27

    Fabulous! Clever linking to cakes! I agree with Suzie :D
    Thanks for linking #ToTT

    ReplyDelete