When your imag­i­na­tion first gives birth to a sto­ry, the char­ac­ters are name­less, and choos­ing names is an impor­tant step in flesh­ing out their iden­ti­ties. The names must fit the per­son­al­i­ties. Huck Finn stiff­ens up if you call him Jack­son Rem­ing­ton Pol­lack, III, and D’Artagnan of The Three Mus­ke­teers los­es all his steam if you name him Humphrey Clinker.

Nam­ing my death row inmate Ken­neth Deather­age (pro­nounced “death a ridge”) in The Clos­ing took me on a mean­der­ing jour­ney. The sur­name was easy. I found it research­ing the ances­try of the Oder fam­i­ly. My ances­tors were farm­ers liv­ing near Lit­tle Wash­ing­ton and Flint Hill, Vir­ginia, in the 1800’s. Deather­ages lived all around them, and I found grave­stones near those towns bear­ing that name dat­ing back to 1830. I was so famil­iar with the name when I select­ed it for my char­ac­ter that I didn’t real­ize until lat­er how well it matched the accu­sa­tions against him – Death rage.

His giv­en name was what caused me trou­ble. Orig­i­nal­ly, I called him Carl Deather­age, but that didn’t feel right after I’d writ­ten a few chap­ters. This often hap­pens. As a char­ac­ter devel­ops and matures, the name I first chose slides off the mark, and I’ll cast around for a bet­ter fit. Deather­age became Robert, then Logan, then Lon­ni­gan. None of them worked, and in the end I gave him my first name, Ken­neth, and I had his moth­er call him Ken­ny, which my mom called me till the day she passed on. At least one friend was trou­bled by this. “Why would you give an accused mur­der­er-rapist your own name?” she asked, look­ing some­what anx­ious. (I’ve also noticed she’s care­ful nev­er to be left alone with me since she read the book.) The rea­son is I had a hard time get­ting into this character’s head. I thought maybe giv­ing him my name would help me under­stand him bet­ter. My trick helped some. I even devel­oped some empa­thy for him, but it didn’t serve to over­come the dis­tance between us. It was an inter­est­ing exer­cise, though.

I take spe­cial care in my nov­els with sur­names. My sto­ries are set in Vir­ginia in the 60’s, so for authen­tic­i­ty, I search for long-time Vir­ginia fam­i­ly names. Ros­aline Part­low was my great great grand aunt. She lived near Lit­tle Wash­ing­ton in the 1860’s. The mur­der vic­tim, Dar­lene Updike, takes her name from anoth­er ances­tor from that same place and time. The name Feed­low (the Buck Coun­ty sher­iff in The Clos­ing) comes from a 1760 mar­riage record, but the name is prob­a­bly an error. In those days most peo­ple were illit­er­ate and couldn’t spell their names. The coun­ty clerks would do their best to spell them pho­net­i­cal­ly and they often got it wrong. To make mat­ters worse, the records are hand­writ­ten, fad­ed with age, and some­times inde­ci­pher­able.  Feed­low became Fid­dler and some­times Field­er in lat­er records, but I liked the sound of Feed­low, so I stayed with it.

Nate Abbitt’s fam­i­ly name came from attor­neys in Appo­mat­tox, who rep­re­sent­ed my father in his par­ents’ divorce pro­ceed­ings when he was a boy. There was no legal prece­dent in the ear­ly 30’s for a child hav­ing sep­a­rate rep­re­sen­ta­tion in those cas­es, but two young lawyers, the Abbitt broth­ers, took him on pro bono and blazed a new trail in the chancery court, resolv­ing cus­tody more in line with his wish­es. One of the broth­ers lat­er became the coun­ty commonwealth’s attor­ney, and although Nate’s char­ac­ter was in no way based on these lawyers, I bor­rowed their sur­name for Nate.

I named my myopic pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tor, Clarence Shif­flett. The name Clarence was per­fect for this eccen­tric old gumshoe, but I caught some flack from a read­er who thought I stole the name Shif­flett from a John Grisham char­ac­ter in The Rain­mak­er. I didn’t steal it. Grisham lives in Nel­son Coun­ty, Vir­ginia, near my old stomp­ing grounds. Shif­flett is a more com­mon name there than Smith or Jones. About half my child­hood friends were Shif­fletts and 450 of them swell the pages of the Char­lottesville phone book today. If I want­ed to make my books more real­is­tic with­out regard to the con­fu­sion it would cause, I’d name almost all my char­ac­ters Shif­flett. But let me tell you, it’s a tough name to spell cor­rect­ly when you address a Christ­mas card to a friend. There are so many vari­a­tions on the num­ber of t’s and f’s with a silent p occa­sion­al­ly dropped in the mid­dle or an e tacked on to the end. I can’t keep the dif­fer­ent ver­sions straight. Even with Clarence, a guy I made up, I unin­ten­tion­al­ly spelled the name four dif­fer­ent ways in the draft man­u­script. Near­ly drove my copy edi­tor crazy. A web­site about this inter­est­ing and sto­ried fam­i­ly can be found at http://www.klein-shiflett.com/shifletfamily/HHI/surname.html.

I gave one of my char­ac­ters in The Clos­ing a vari­a­tion of my own sur­name. The clerks in colo­nial Vir­ginia messed up my fam­i­ly name to the point where I don’t know what it real­ly was or where it came from. Peo­ple I can prove were of my blood­line are list­ed in old records as Oder, Odar, Odir, Ody­er, O’Dyer, Odo, Odoe, Oden, Odor, Odle, O’Der, Odom, Odoms, and on and on. So I named the African Amer­i­can man, who cap­tured Deather­age and held him down until the law arrived, Willis Odoms. He was the most admirable char­ac­ter in the book, so maybe I was try­ing to make it up to my moth­er and my anx­ious friend for hav­ing named my accused mur­der­er-rapist Kenny.

Any­way, my sur­name is a sore point with me, giv­en all the teas­ing it gen­er­at­ed when I was in ele­men­tary school (not to men­tion the con­tin­u­ing jabs from adults who nev­er pro­gressed beyond grade school matu­ri­ty lev­els). I often wish that some­one in my direct line had steered the spelling of the name toward a less odi­ous (get it?) out­come. So maybe I should change it, the way I change a fic­tion­al character’s name when I don’t like it. Costs about $150 to change a name legal­ly, I hear, well worth it in my case. With all the demo­graph­ic shifts in the coun­try, I fig­ure I’ll go with the flow and choose some­thing with a Latin flair to it. I’m think­ing Ken­i­to Aroma.

I always want­ed to be a writer. Fresh out of col­lege, I took a job as a high school Eng­lish teacher in Vir­ginia, hop­ing to write dur­ing my off-time. It didn’t work out. I couldn’t make a liv­ing on teacher’s pay and I didn’t have much to say as a writer at the age of 22. So I went to law school and joined a law firm in Los Ange­les. I still secret­ly want­ed to be a writer, but the law is a jeal­ous mis­tress, who left me no time to do any­thing else.

In 1989, a lawyer in my firm asked me to han­dle a case for one of his clients, H.N. Swan­son, Inc. The company’s offices on Sun­set Boule­vard in Hol­ly­wood looked like a library in dire need of a big clean-up. Wall-to-wall shelves and rows of big tables were stacked with musty books, velo-bound doc­u­ments, and loose papers, some caked with decades-old lay­ers of dust. Upstairs, behind a mas­sive desk, also piled high with papers and books, sat a short, frail, ancient man with bright eyes, the hint of a smile, and a full head of snow-white hair combed straight back.

I sat down across the desk from Harold “Swanie” Swan­son and we began to talk. I asked a few get-acquaint­ed ques­tions and his sto­ry came tum­bling out like a water­fall. He was just shy of 90 years old. Born in Iowa, he worked as a writer in Chica­go and moved to Hol­ly­wood in the 30’s to pro­duce movies, but he real­ized his tal­ent was in sales and he became a lit­er­ary agent, rep­re­sent­ing screen writ­ers and nov­el­ists in nego­ti­a­tions with stu­dios about movie rights. “Give me a good sto­ry and a tele­phone and I’ll sell it every time,” he said.

“So, Harold,” I said. “You rep­re­sent any writ­ers I might have heard of? Any­one famous?”

I now rank this as one of the dumb­est ques­tions I ever posed to any­one (and believe me, this is a com­pet­i­tive field). Swanie’s answer went on for about an hour, a parade of hall of fame writ­ers with col­or­ful vignettes about each one.  F. Scott Fitzger­ald, Ray­mond Chan­dler, James Cain, Pearl Buck, Hem­ing­way, Faulkn­er.

“You read any of Dutch Leonard’s books?” he asked.

By then I was star­ing at him blankly. My jaw went slack back there at the men­tion of F. Scott Fitzger­ald, and I was inca­pable of form­ing words. He mis­took my paral­y­sis for con­fu­sion and added by way of expla­na­tion, “You prob­a­bly know him as Elmore Leonard. His friends call him Dutch.”

I emit­ted a gut­tur­al utter­ance meant to con­vey that I’d heard of Elmore Leonard, like every­one who wasn’t in a coma from 1975 on.

Swanie shook his head and smiled. “Man, he can spin a sto­ry, can’t he?”

I mirac­u­lous­ly found the pres­ence of mind to vocal­ize anoth­er dumb ques­tion, which launched Swanie on a sto­ry spree. Fitzger­ald asked Swanie to read a nov­el he’d writ­ten. The title was Tri­mal­chio in West Egg. Swanie liked the book but told him he’d nev­er sell it with that title. He sug­gest­ed he call it “Gats­by.” Fitzger­ald set­tled on “The Great Gats­by.” Swanie fol­lowed this up with hilar­i­ous tales of drunk­en antics at the Fit­ger­alds’ parties.

I nudged the con­ver­sa­tion toward Hem­ing­way. He didn’t have any friends, Swanie said, and he couldn’t write until he’d downed a few.

Ray­mond Chan­dler? He didn’t like lit­er­ary agents, except for Swanie, and didn’t have much respect for their judg­ment. His prac­tice was to thank them polite­ly for their advice and to do the exact oppo­site of what they said.

About two hours into our con­ver­sa­tion, Swanie looked at his watch and said, “We’ve been talk­ing for quite a while, but we haven’t dis­cussed my case at all. Are you billing me for this time?”

Need­less to say, I ate the time. In fact, if I’d had good sense I would have paid him to keep talk­ing, but hey, I was a lawyer back then and that sort of thing is against our reli­gion, so we moved on and talked about the law, which was, of course, mind-numb­ing­ly bor­ing to both of us.

As the case plod­ded along over the fol­low­ing weeks, more of Swanie’s sto­ries came out. He was very fond of Elmore Leonard and it appears the feel­ing was mutu­al. Ear­ly in Leonard’s career, Swanie sold sev­er­al of his west­ern nov­els to stu­dios for movie pro­duc­tion, includ­ing Hom­bre, which starred Paul New­man. When Leonard switched to crime nov­els, his reg­u­lar pub­lish­ing agent passed away, and he brought The Big Bounce to Swanie. When Swanie read it, he told Leonard, “Kid­do, I’m going to make you rich.” A long line of best sell­ers fol­lowed. The ded­i­ca­tion to Leonard’s La Bra­va reads, “This one’s for Swanie, bless his heart.”

Swanie was bud­dies with Humphrey Bog­a­rt, Walt Dis­ney, and Clark Gable and friends with Glo­ria Swan­son. He nego­ti­at­ed the con­tracts for the movies The Big Sleep, Old Yeller, The Post­man Always Rings Twice, But­ter­field Eight, and many oth­ers. Mem­o­ries of his deal­ings with oth­er authors rolled out – Thorn­ton Wilder, Sher­wood Ander­son, Paul Ther­oux, Joyce Car­ol Oates, Joseph Wambaugh, Ross Mac­Don­ald, and on and on.

My short time with Swanie was pre­cious and price­less. He was a great guy, unfail­ing­ly gen­er­ous in shar­ing his mem­o­ries with me, and he was always warm, friend­ly, and patient. I nev­er heard him say a rude word to any­one. His charm even­tu­al­ly tamed the attor­neys who had sued him, and we set­tled the case. In our last meet­ing as we said good-bye, I screwed up my courage to con­fess my secret dream. “Long run, I want to be a writer,” I blurt­ed out with a tremor in my voice.

He shook my hand and gave me a wiz­ened smile. “Keep your day job, kid­do.” It was good advice. I fol­lowed it. For a while.

Swanie died in May, 1991. Elmore Leonard wrote an affec­tion­ate trib­ute to him for the L.A.Times. You can read it here. As I was writ­ing this, I dis­cov­ered that Swanie left behind a mem­oir, Sprin­kled With Ruby Dust. It’s only avail­able in hard­cov­er and its sales rank on Ama­zon is about 3,000,000 with no read­er reviews or rat­ings. It was panned in the only pub­lished review I could find, but I ordered it and I’m going to post a pos­i­tive review. I owe him way more than that for the fas­ci­nat­ing sto­ries. Swanie’s for­got­ten now by most, I guess, but I’ll nev­er for­get him or the day I stepped into that musty old trea­sure trove of lit­er­ary history.