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.
