A Character By Any Other Name – Denton Ward

As I gently dip my toe back into the warm waters of daily writing and living with Denton and Monty, I thought it might be interesting to share with you, my readers, some of the inside stories or perhaps reveal some of my thought processes as I went about creating these characters.

The character I created first was Denton.  He and Monty both started bubbled up from my subconscious around 1984.  At the time I was stationed in the United Kingdom at a highly controversial Air Force Base called RAF Greenham Common. I was 4 years into my 6 year enlistment, and, drunk on travel, Jack Kerouac and the need to express myself, I was taking a short story writing correspondence course through Writers Digest.

My instructor was a kind gentleman, noted horror writer J. N. Williamson. This was before the time of the Al Gore’s Internet, so Jerry and I corresponded and exchanged assignments the old fashioned way: via the US Post Office.

I was working on a short story featuring Denton and Monty that was more cyberpunk science fiction (William Gibson’s Neuromancer was all the rage at the time) than present day mystery.  I had a picture of Monty in my mind, but Denton eluded me. I knew what I wanted him to be, but I didn’t really know who I wanted him to be until I saw a book cover that just haunted me.

I was in Waterstone’s bookstore one weekend in London, and I saw this image on the cover of a book. The image is of noted UK fiction writer Denton Welch. Once I saw this, everything seemed to click.  The glasses, the thin face, the haunted look, the cheekbones – this was my psychic detective.

I also liked the first name. Denton.  I didn’t know any Denton’s, never heard of any famous Denton’s (except maybe Doctor Denton’s) so I figured that the name was relatively rare and unused.

But what of the last name? I liked the syllable pattern of Welch’s name.  Denton Welch. Da-Di-Da. But Welch didn’t really say psychic detective.  Welch said grape juice, or maybe grape jelly.

Then I remembered my Lovecraft.  Ward. As in “The Strange Case of Charles Dexter Ward”.

I re-read the story and knew I was on to something.  The hospitalization, the insanity, the darkness, the demons – both inner and outer, the madness, the New England sort of isolation and secrets kept behind closed doors.

Denton Ward.

Perfect.