My next novel is going to be Bootylicious
- Brandi Bradley
- Apr 2
- 4 min read
And other names I considered while working on my next novel
In the spring, I write more.
I have one less class to teach, and, this semester, I was gifted with two creative writing classes to teach. This means that I can now section off an hour of my day to work on a scene in my next novel. I’ve gotta step on it because I promised myself I would have the first draft done by August 1. Yesterday I hammered out 1,500 words and really deliberated over whether the strip club in my book would be named Bootylicious.
And here was my thought process: Bootylicious is fun to say and fun to see typed out, but I’m not coopting the original product of Destiny’s Child or Beyonce camps. Also, this strip club is off a lone highway across the Tennessee/Kentucky boarder. The clientele are local rowdy’s and nearby college kids. The women working there will be local who make the bulk of their money when they travel to larger places like Memphis, Nashville, or Louisville. It's going to be more like the place in Ozark, and, in my opinion, I didn't find that the booty in that fictional establishment was particularly impressive.
Bootylicious isn't the right fit.
But I was tired, so I typed in Bootylicious anyway, and highlighted it in pink so I will know I need to change it.
This is actually the most fun part about writing, naming things. When someone writes a novel, everything needs to have a new name: cities, streets, restaurants, churches, people, pets, subdivisions, stores, and more. Sometimes I will name it something silly knowing it's my own little joke until I decide what something will actually be named.
I can rely on a few known names if my area is populated enough. I’ve most recently added a Starbucks and a McAlister’s in a short story I have coming out soon, because sometimes people do meet in these spaces – these strip mall generic locations where people feel safe in case things get weird. Chain restaurants are bright with large widows and nosy Karens who are WISHING for someone to give them a reason to call the cops.
But if you need people to spend time in more seedier places, places where no one is going to call the cops for any reason whatsoever, because who knows what they have going on in a back room, you need to give that place a name.
In addition to the strip club, I'm struggling with the name for the bar where my detective and their soon-to-be-Watson to their Sherlock meet for the first time.
I can’t use the name of the place that inspired it. In addition to the potential legal problems it would cause, I would also be trapped into trying to make it as close to real as possible. Close to real as possible is not the point, and also, that struggle often appears in the writing. So I make things up. That’s why I do fiction.
Potential names:
The Jackyl – but I scrapped it because my detectives name is Jackie. I also have a lot of J names already. My instinct is to name things with a J or J sound. I already have Jackie and Gem, which is already too cutesy. Oh, and Gina’s going to show up later. So I’m already overloaded with J sounds.
BoBo's – which I thought was fun. People would text BoBo, or BBs. But that’s also my initials, and already my stories are at a risk of sounding self-indulgent. I couldn’t do it.
Right now, it’s Stallion’s. I liked the idea of a black horse logo, and even a retro-1970s-Nashville-Neon sign installed at the edge of the road. But whenever I see it in print my brain adds the word Italian in front and now I’m thinking about Sylvester Stalone.
Regardless, I’ve decided to stick with Stallion’s for now.
Sometimes when I run out of ideas for names for people – ones that don’t pop in my head – I will look for places that have rosters. Some writers use phone books, but I’ve been using previous baseball players for the Atlanta Braves. Have fun identifying those names.
I have a tiny little Notes file with the list of names on it, of all the different towns I have renamed, streets I have renamed, and then, of course, that names of all the characters. Or, at least I thought I had. I was feeling incredibly confident about the list until I opened it this week, and all that was on it was the names of the detectives in “Local Monsters”, Newburn County, Pleasant Springs, Southwestern Kentucky University.
That’s it!
And as my fictional world expands, I know it will become challenging to keep up with everything. And even when speaking to my publicity coordinator this week, I kept forgetting the names of the places. Hillary from Pretty Girls is getting her own story in “The Disappearing Family”, but it takes place in an area near Pleasant Springs, it’s not even a real town, but an unincorporated community, which means it’s an area without a police department, without a City Hall, and without municipal services.
This means my next task is to create a master list of names for reference.
Wish me luck on this new manuscript, which I am totally obsessed with. If you have a suggestion for a character name, feel free to send it to me on Instagram @thebrandibradley.
Get excited, because my new short story “The Disappearing Family” will be available for purchase in May, just in time for Mystery Month! But newsletter subscribers will have first access to it starting on April 17! Sign up for the newsletter to get the story first!
And be sure to check out the rest of the catalog! Grab your copy of Pretty Girls Get Away With Murder!
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