Monster Storms or Twins in TWINLESS by Pamela Bennett
A blast of winter wind rattles the window, frigid air seeps in under the door, and the snow keeps falling, falling and falling—piling up to 11 inches or more, effectively trapping many of us in our houses today. Meteorologists in central Ohio warned us yesterday that “Something Wicked This Way Comes,” to borrow from Raymond Bradbury—a monster storm was expected to whoosh in and cover half the population of the country in more than a foot of snow and ice.
So, what did they name this monster? Winter Storm Fern.
Oh, wow. Fern? A “feathery plant with delicate leaves and no flowers,” according to Britannica’s online dictionary. Just who is naming these things?
Seems like a monster storm might have a more menacing name, such as Maleficent or Medusa. I mean, really…remember Fern Arable in Charlotte’s Web? No one was sweeter than the girl who saved Wilbur the pig from her father’s sharp axe. Well, maybe Charlotte herself.
Then again, my husband and I walked on a path in Hocking Hills a few days ago and marveled at long green ferns pushing up under the snow, healthy and resilient, covering the hillside and hanging from cliffsides, even under a curtain of icicles.
Coming up with appropriate names is never easy, in real life, or in fiction. As a writer, naming characters in a novel can be daunting, especially since you end up living with those names for many months or even years.
As adult identical twins writing about adult identical twins in our literary suspense novel TWINLESS, we didn’t want cute rhyming names for our twins, because we are Janet and Pamela and never wanted to rhyme. Now did people sometimes call us Jan and Pam to make our names almost rhyme? Yes, of course. And some family members called us “twin” because they couldn’t tell us apart. Consequently, if someone calls out “Janet,” I tend to turn around and look, and vice versa. So, I guess we also answer to each other’s names!
We’ve heard of twins named Chloe and Zoe, Mia and Maya, Hailey and Bailey and even Audrey and Aubrey. I think you’re really asking for confusion with the latter, either in fiction or real life. How would the toddlers themselves ever learn who is who? And I can just imagine having to go back pages and pages in a story to figure out whether you just read about Audrey or Aubrey.
We came up with Maggie and Kennedy for the twins in our story, but Maggie calls her sister “Kennie” in some scenes.
Since most debut novels are known to be a bit autobiographical, I wondered if Maggie would be closer to my personality and Kennedy closer to Janet’s, since Maggie, the artist, was more outgoing (or reckless) and Kennedy, the child psychologist, was the quieter, less impulsive twin.
As we wrote the story, though, both twins seemed to share certain aspects of our separate personalities, while being very different people, just like us.
A character in our novel, reporter Clay Williams, describes Maggie and Kennedy in his viewpoint:
He thought about Maggie’s twin. Talking to Kennedy at the pond, seeing her quietly absorbing his words, watching pain flit across her face when she held her niece. It made him realize the sisters were not complete carbon copies, despite being identical.
He remembered Maggie as vibrant, from the color in her cheeks to the deep russet highlights in her hair. Her beauty hit him in the face like a fist.
Kennedy’s beauty was subtle. Not quite a shadow, more like a softer reflection of her sister. Still identical, but slightly paler and more subdued, with interesting surprises. Like concentric circles behind glass. Every Christmas, his mother wound strands of colored lights around a shelf of glass snow globes. When she turned down the overhead lights, sharp, surprising spheres of color—red, blue, green and yellow, shot up the dining room wall.
We used flashbacks occasionally in the story to depict childhood memories, and Kennedy remembers Maggie as “the strong twin, the brave one.”
When Sally Matthews picked a fight with Kennedy in a neighbor’s courtyard, when they were seven, calling her “crazy Kenny—crazy Kenny has a boy’s name. Are you a boy, Kenny? You look like a boy,” Kennedy’s humiliation made her shove Sally’s face away. Then Sally punched her—right in the nose.
She remembered the sudden, white-hot pain. Pinpoints of metallic light blurred her eyes, then lots of sobs—her own. But Maggie leaped on Sally and it was Sally’s wails that filled the courtyard. It had taken two teenage boys to halt Maggie’s flailing fists and get her off of Sally Matthews, who never bothered Kennedy again.
I’m not too sure how old we were, but in real life, I was the twin being picked on, and Janet was the twin who jumped on the girl who pulled my hair and tried to intimidate me. That girl never bothered me again—probably because she wasn’t sure if I was the twin who cried or the twin who punched her!
Of course, TWINLESS is fiction, and we’ll never tell if any of the scenes came from our actual lives growing up as twins, except the one I just told you about.
TWINLESS is in the query trenches right now, being considered by several agents we hope will be intrigued by our pitch:
Am I myself or my sister? An identical twin must lose her own identity or her life in a dangerous underground game in Kentucky cave country.
Best wishes to everyone else in the query trenches and to the millions affected by that not-so-sweet Winter Storm Fern. Stay warm and safe!