Wednesday, November 15

The Name Thing...

I've just finished Madeline Hunter's The Rules of Seduction, like I said in my post last night, it's very character driven.

The hero's name is Lord Hayden Rothwell. Ms. Hunter gave a wonderful description of him on page...

Dark hair, unruly as if the brushes had been forgotten this morning, framed a handsome face composed of strong, chiseled planes. Signs of fatigue dulled his deeply set, midnight-blue eyes. Strained forebearance tightened his square jaw and firmly set mouth...

So, why is it I spent a good part of the book visualizing Craig T. Nelson from the old TV sitcom Coach. I kept waiting for Jerry VanDyke to come running in screaming "HAYDEN, HAYDEN!!"

And then somehow the blue jean wearing "Coach" morphed into
Mr. Incredible when the voice started to interfer. I guess the midnight-blue eye color might match, but that's about it--LOL.

I hate doing this. Hayden's a rather distinctive name, I don't know anyone with it. If the name had been William or Bill, Ben or David, I'd probably not have visualized anything.

I should be relieved I didn't visualize Hugh Grant and Lilith (Frasier's prissy ex-wife) while reading Meljean's Demon Angel.

Does this happen because I'm not fully engaged in the story? Hmmm, I'll have to think about it.

9 comments:

Jenster said...

LOL! My son has a friend named Hayden. A very short and scrawny, strawberry blonde, freckle faced boy. I hope I don't picture HIM when I read that book. lol

Jen

Rosie said...

Unless I've had an extremely dramatic event associated with someone I don't identify a book character with someone in real life with the same name. My oldest son's name is Cole...do you know how many Coles there are in romance novels?

I read RULES FOR SEDUCTION and enjoyed it. I never watched Coach so I didn't have the same problem with the name at all. Am I bad when I say you've provided me a morning chuckle thinking about you doing it?

Tara Marie said...

Jen, Gee, I hope I didn't ruin this for you--LOL. Scrawny... little kid definitely wont work.

Rosie, Not bad at all, I laughed at myself. And yes, Cole would be hard to miss in romanceland.

Anonymous said...

Hayden = that blond kid from the new Star Wars trilogy. Not good. :D It's too unusual for anyone to separate the name from a character or real-life person, I think.

Tara Marie said...

Maili--It's too unusual for anyone to separate the name from a character or real-life person...--Exactly!

Anonymous said...

Hmm. I have passed over this book several times because I haven't been impressed with Hunter the last two or three books. What was your assessment of her previous works?

Tara Marie said...

Jane, I love her medievals. I thought Lady of Sin and The Romantic were very good, didn't like Lord of Sin and the rest were okay/pretty good.

Tara Marie said...

Jane, one more thing, if you liked Lady of Sin or The Romantic you'll probably like this one too.

Anonymous said...

I didn't like the Romantic. I wanted to like it. The premise appealed to me, but I didn't like the execution. when does Liz Carlyle come out with a new book?