When I first started writing The Inheritance, my main character’s name was Bother, because that’s what he was: bothered by a deep emptiness inside. Nothing filled that void. He lived with a persistent sense that something was missing, something just beyond reach.
The name Bother fit his restlessness perfectly, but it quickly became a problem. The word appeared too often elsewhere in the narrative and blurred the meaning I wanted to give it. So I began searching for another name—one that would...
