I had an email last night from Laura in Shetland who’s says, “I’ve just finished Dragon Gold, which I really enjoyed. One question, why did you change Harri to Harry on p119? Or were you just checking we would read the book?”

Oops! I don’t know how that happened! Well, actually, yes I do. A glaring typo like that can stare you in the face as the author and you just don’t see it. Similarly, editors and copy readers can skim over it and not see it either. There are some typos which are destined to make it through to the first edition!

Why did I choose a different spelling of Harry? How do authors choose the names of their characters. This is how Harri came to be:

I’d had the idea for Dragon Gold floating around in my head for some time, but couldn’t quite get it to work. It needed another ingredient. Stories are like that.

When Firefly Press, the first and only children’s publisher in Wales asked me to be one of their first authors, I was thrilled. The invitation was the missing ingredient. Firefly had been asked by the Welsh Government to commission stories set in contemporary Wales but written in English.

I’d not thought to set the book in Wales before. Wales has a Red Dragon as it’s symbol – the Ddraig Goch. The setting was what I needed, everything fell into place in my mind. Now to choose the name of my hero.

I wanted it to be contemporary, so I Googled popular boy’s names in Wales. At the top of the list was Harri! Perfect, I thought. It reads the same in English and Welsh and is very contemporary – Prince Harry was doing something manly on the TV news at the time!

More used to spelling the name the traditional, English way, one or two Harrys slipped through. I imagine I was caught up in the story and my fingers did the writing on their own – writing is a strange business when you are in the flow. Spellings don’t worry me at that point, they can always be sorted out later. Anyway, I edit voraciously and continuously while I’m writing.

I’m pretty sure I even did a spell check to make sure there weren’t any Harrys floating around in there. The trouble with editing is that miss-spellings can enter right near the end of the editing process, when everyone thinks the text is clean and sorted.

I did stop for a moment to wonder why Harri might be a popular name. I assumed it was to do with Prince Harry – who surely has a lot of influence on the popularity of the name – and moved on. It never crossed my mind that it might be down to one Harry Potter! (Assume makes an Ass out of U and Me!)

Neither did it cross my mind that Harri might himself be wizard material! That possibility grew as the story evolved – the Welshness of the story taking me off in a new direction.

I’m hoping Harri’s story will continue at least into a trilogy – there is a path of destiny calling him onwards. I’ll have to make sure that the spell check is done just before the texts go to the printers next time, (and maybe we can sort out page 119 in the next edition).

But never mind all this… what does Laura really think about the book? She says:

“This is the first book that I didn’t want to put down.”

Thanks for that, Laura! Order a signed copy from me and get a free, fabulous A3 poster – while stocks last.