People often ask me how I come up with my characters and stories. With me, it’s pretty organic. I don’t always set out to write to market, as they say. For me, it’s more like the character taps me on the shoulder and says something like, “Hey, have I got a story to tell you!” In Nick’s case it wasn’t a matter of story so much as it was a sexy name.
When I first moved to Southern California after ten years in the Sacramento foothills, I had to get a new phone number. It wasn’t long before I discovered that the person who had the number before me was a pretty colorful character. I found myself having daily “Jumping Jack Flash” moments.
The gentleman’s name was Nick Berlin. [Okay. So I’m going to put out a caveat right now to anyone out there with the name, because I know there are a few. I assure you, the Nick Berlin in this story can’t possible be your Nick Berlin. Or at least I hope so and apologize in advance by some miracle he is.]
This Nick Berlin apparently had a number of acquaintances who were having trouble finding him. Many of them women. Pissed-off, angry women, if I were to take a guess, jilted? (Is that word still used these days?) If they didn’t hang up when they heard my voice on the phone, they pressed me for questions, or warned me off getting too close to the man in question. One of them was extremely aggressive. They last time she deigned to call and press me for information, I told her “No I don’t know where he is, and if you hear from him tell him for me our baby is due on the twenty-second and he better show up this time.” I didn’t hear from her again.
The other calls were from collection agencies, a man named Felix who claimed he owed him money and he’d better pay up if he knew what was good for him; and various government agencies, no doubt the IRS, the CIA, or the FBI. Every time my new husband and I heard my phone ring late at night, we’d say, that’s probably for Nick. This went on for several years, winding down, until finally enough people figured out, Nick was no long at the other end of my number.
So it was no surprise, when I needed a hero’s name in Mint Condition, the name popped right up. Of course it would be Nick Berlin. (Although, in truth, Mint Condition’s Nick is a fine upstanding real estate mogul worth millions of bucks, his father, Nicholas Berlin, Sr. is an absolute scoundrel!) This testifying to the truth that once I open that story door, I never quite know where it will eventually take me.
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