I didn't steal your name - I just like it.

Another fun thing about being a writer is getting to name characters.

Now, if you're writing Game of Thrones, you can get creative and just push and pull a few letters around to make new, unique monikers for your characters.  But my preference is for 'ordinary' names (most of the time) and to that end, I spend hours searching through baby name databases, finding names with just the right feel to them.

Unfortunately, the longer you're alive, the more likely you are to meet and make friends with people who share names with your characters.  And that can be a bit awkward.

I don't know what it's like for someone to read a book where the character shares their name as it's never happened to me.  But when a book that's been in the works for months - or, often, years - is published and it's filled with your friends' names, you have to wonder how it'll feel to them.  Even if you try and avoid using names of people you know, at some point that just becomes limiting.

In the universe I draw from, character names and even characters cross between worlds, take on different roles and appear in each others' stories.

This is part of a larger multiverse where multiple sets of characters live out their lives and adventures in altered versions of the same world.

In one version of the universe, werewolves and vampires are real.  In another, the concept of vamparism is real but is caused by a disease.  In other universes, supernatural beings only exist as ideas or hallucinations and occasionally, no one drinks blood at all.

So, to all the folks who find their names turning up in my books time and time again - I didn't steal your names, I promise.  The character models come from this infinite multiverse and those names came from the land of the internet.