30 unique character names

Sometimes we have a book idea come to us but no matter how hard and long you look you can never find the perfect name for your character. In the past, I have done a blog post on A list of character names but sometimes when you can't find the perfect name it's because your character is demanding either an uncommon or Unique name.

In this blog post, I will be going over strange character names and what they mean.

Boy names:

1. Cormoc-impure son
2. Amos-to carry; borne by God
3. Zaire-"the river that swallows all rivers"
4. Valentino-"strong"
5. Talon-"large claw pf a bird of prey"
6. Koa-"brave, bold, fearless"
7. Beckett-"beehive, bee cottage"
8. Aera-“strength of a lion.”
9. Arsenio- “strength”
10. Axl- “father of peace”

Girl names:

1. Xylenna- name meaning unknown but also means Thanks
2. Nikolina-"victor of the people"
3. Brigitta- "exalted one"
4. Clementine- "Merciful"
5. Effie- "well-spoken"
6. Arwen- "muse"
7. Caitríona- "pure"
8. Allegra- "joyful, lively"
9. Isolde-"ice, battle"
10. Thais- "beloved, bandage"

Names that could be unisex:

1. Abendrot- "The colour of the sky while the sun is setting"
2. Ali - "Elevated or champion"
3. Avery - "Elf king."
4. Azure - "Bright blue"
5. Aeonian- "eternal, everlasting"
6. Nohea-"Beautiful"
7. Armani-"Warrior"
8. Lennox-"with many elm trees"
9. Tatum-"cheerful bringer of joy"
10. Baylor-"one who delivers goods"

How to organize your book files

Over the course of this blog, I'm sure you have gathered for each book. I have so many documents to go along with it, it can get so overwhelming trying to find where all my documents are relating to my book, so I thought I would let you guys in on how I organize my book work.

For this, I will be showing you how I do it on google docs, but I have the exact same system in place on my laptop and external hard drive. I have covered some things up because it exposes the name of the books that I am not yet ready to announce.

I have four folders, one not relating to my books and then three relating to them. 

One holds all the books I haven't started to write yet and is just a pile of documents with the idea for the book that I will eventually expand on.

The next set of folders is my working folder. This folder holds all the books I am currently writing. Within this folder is a folder for each project. Some folders hold more documents than others. Within these folders, they will hold the book outline, Book bible if I have one for that book. The document holding the draft of the novel, any information I need to remember and parts for the books that I write the ending or something that I am not up to yet. 

The other just holds the final copy of all my finished work, the synopsis and any publishing information I need.

By doing it this way, I can easily decide which project I want to work on and open the folder and have everything I could possibly need to work on the book without getting distracted looking for files relating to the book.

Building an author platform

Having a platform as a writer makes writing not only easier to keep in touch with your readers but promoting any work you are doing as well; getting the word out there about your book no matter if you are an self published author or been published by a big name company.
 
You see authors like Stephen king, J.K. Rowling and Stephanie Meyer still using twitter to promote and keep up to date on there readers and with the writing world always changing it can be hard to stay up to date on it and not fall behind.
 
Some of my biggest tips are as followed to help you build your author platform to the best of your ability and remember to always use resources available to you. 
 

1. )  Know your target audience.

 
This goes without saying but if you don’t know who your readers are you cant efficiently interact with them. If your target audience is teens then you will need to use social media platforms to reach them like Tiktok, Instagram and YouTube but if your target audience is say middle aged men and woman then you should look into twitter and Facebook etc.
 

2. ) Connect offline {if you can}

 
With the pandemic this one can be harder to accomplish but I do know some conventions are still on so its just a matter of research on your part to see what you can get involved with.  In person writing groups can be an amazing way to meet other writers in your area and make life long friendships and contacts that can help spread the word about you. Conventions are also another way to stay active in the community.
 

3. ) Consistency

 
It is very easy to get lost now on social media if you are not consistent. What ever platform you decide to work with as an author platform you need to really stick to a schedule so your readers know when to check for your posts as well as not missing a day if you can. If you choose a platform like twitter you should be writing tweets daily and not just one but many. I personally try for at least five posts spread out through my day to reach people in different time zones.
 

4. ) Get out there

 
If you run a blog as a way to reach your audience think about writing guest posts on other writing related blogs. Reach out to fellow writers and both of you can write a blog post and upload it to your blogs so that you are using your readers to spread the word and love to other writers.
 
Doing interviews or going on someones podcast is also a good way to get out there and bring in new readers.
 

5. ) Contacts

 
Everyone you know is a contact. By talking to friends and family sometimes even neighbors or people you meet you can boost word of mouth and not only get them to read your work but they are more likely to spread the word to there friends and people they know which immediately boosts how many people know about you.
 
I had a three hour layover back in 2019 and got to talking to a mother and daughter and found out that the genre I actually write in is the genre the daughter likes to read and it all started because I was working on my book while waiting and my mum got talking and told this ladies mother about my work which just goes to show how far words can go.
 

6. ) Twitter

 
While Twitter can be hard to stay connected to the younger audience it is a valuable resource for writers to meet other writers. There are so many hashtags on Twitter that writers are active in daily and following that it is quite handy to use to make more contacts and friends as well as get help when you are stuck with writing itself.
 
 

Writing advice

Writing can be rough at times; sometimes, we need a little extra helping hand and don't know who to turn to. Some of the best advice out there is from other authors. I went searching my brain and the web to find writing advice that I think every writer new or old needs to hear and remember.

• Beginnings matter.
• Let the story take you on adventures
• It’s supposed to be difficult.
• Write what you want to read
• Write as often as you can
• Eliminate distractions
• Just write to write
• Write now, edit later
• When writing dialogue say it out loud
• Always carry a notebook
• Don't give up
• Abandon the idea that you will ever finish but keep writing
• Skip over and come back on parts that you are strugllign with
• Know your characters

What is your writing advice? Let me know in the comments.

Links to websites I used to make this list:

https://lithub.com/i-talked-to-150-writers-and-heres-the-best-advice-they-had/

https://self-publishingschool.com/writing-tips/

https://getfreewrite.com/blogs/writing-success/writing-tips-from-famous-writers

https://www.pinterest.nz/chittockphoebe/writing/writing-tipsadvice/

Books I have published

Wrongful love

Elena is your not so average sixteen-year-old with a vast number of mental health issues but, when she meets thirty-five-year-old successful businessman, Marcus her whole life flips upside down for better or worse. 

Wrongful love is available on Amazon in paperback and ebook format and Lulu in paperback format. 

Get Wrongful Love on Amazon

Get Wrongful Love on Lulu

Double Trouble 

Alexandra is the packs least favourite person; while she isn't hurt like some of the neighbouring packs would like, she is treated differently because of her gift. That gift is about to get a whole lot bigger when she finds out she has two mates.

https://enbook.hinovel.com?preference=1&lang=en&book_id=3142

The Gamer Girl

Abby is the most beautiful girl in school, head cheerleader and of course, a werewolf. Anna is the geeky girl who wears glasses to blend in and would rather be at home gaming than be at school and a human. What happens when these two are mated together? 

https://enbook.hinovel.com?preference=1&lang=en&book_id=3143

Rejected Mate

Erika is an abused wolf, including by her own mate. When he realizes who she is he rejects her, forcing her to run from her pack to die in peace. But in a twist of fate, she doesn't die. What will happen next is the real mystery. Read Rejected Mate here 

https://enbook.hinovel.com?preference=1&lang=en&book_id=3144 

Mishaps in writing: Hybrid trilogy mistake

Writing is a process; no matter how long you have been writing, you will make mistakes that can feel like the biggest thing when you realize you made a mistake, but it isn't the mistake that matters. It how you go about fixing it.

In the years I have been writing, I have made both minor mistakes and major mistakes, and recently I realized I had made a mistake while working on my hybrid trilogy, tears were shed but now that I have a plan on how to fix my mistake I decided to write a blog post on how I worked out my mistake and how I plan to fix it as well as what I have learned from making this mistake. 

While I was working on my plan for making the most out of Aprils' Camp NaNoWriMo to finish the third book in the series, I noticed that I have been stuck on a certain part of the book for ages. When I started writing Project Banshee, I struggled a lot, but by the time I hit 11k words, I was officially at a standstill.

I started looking into why this had happened, and I noticed it stems into a bigger issue—the first two books. I had so poorly planned and written Tosha that I had actually made it impossible to write a whole book for her. This is probably the biggest mistake I have made to date when writing or planning one of my books. 

The first thing I realized when I made a mistake is that I need to find a way to fix it. I could start all over again and completely start from scratch with all three books, but I have the first book almost perfect, and I would hate to have to start all over again when my goal was to have the first draft of all three books done by July. 

My first thought was I need to start from scratch but not on my books but on Toshas' book plan; I then need to think of Toshas' story as a stand-alone book and completely start the first draft over once I have finished writing the book I can then go through and edit project hybrid and project choice and fix it up so that Tosha has room to grow and fix any plot holes that form.

This will make life harder on me when it comes to editing, but it's a small price to pay compared to how it could have turned out if it didn't work out. This was a plausible way to fix the issue without completely rewriting all three books and putting years of hard work down the drain.

From this is I have learned the right amount to actually plan for a character. You don't want to under plan and be stuck on developing and writing your character, but you don't want to over-plan so that you have no room for improvising. I also learned that while the book order might be different, its best to write the books in order of age. While project banshee is the last book, its also the youngest any of the characters are in the books.

Misconceptions about writing a book

A lot of people don't understand how hard it can be to write a book. when you talk about having a job as a writer/author people think it is so easy and when you try and explain to people how difficult it actually is people don't really understand so this blog post is here to educate people so that they can see how hard it can be. this isn't a full list of everything but this is just a just a look into two of the biggest things I have found people don't understand.

One of the major misconceptions I hear about is how fast it takes to write a book and get published and I think this comes from how many established authors there are with their turn around rate like Stephen King.

This definitely isn't true especially for new writers trying to get published, as an example I started writing Wrongful Love around the 24th of February 2019 and I wasn't able to publish until November 17th 2020 that's about a year and nine months between when i wrote the first ever word to when I self published the novella. this is still considered fast to some authors. I have heard of authors  still working on there first novel ten years later. There is no perfect time frame to write a book and that's okay and normal.

Another example is i started writing project hyrid in July 2019 and i am still working on it now in march 2021  which just shows some books take longer then others because each writer and book is different and works in different time frames.

Another misconception is about how easy it is to write but there is so much that goes into a book its not as easy as sitting down and writing and then publishing, you have to make sure it flows, no plotholes, make sure everything is perfect, no mistakes. 

When you start writing it is also hard to get going at times because of blocks in your brain that stop you being able to think of where to go next and other times its hard to  work out what is wrong with your work, you can sit staring at the same sentence wondering whats wrong with it and nothing is clicking in your brain saying this is how you fix it.

If you are a writer what would like you the general public to know?