Identity Theft: How We Stole Our Family’s Names for the Overaughs

It is often said that a first novel is a thinly veiled autobiography. I decided to take that literally. If you look closely at Seth Overaugh, you might notice he feels familiar. That is because his name is a partial anagram of Heath Groves, i needed to add a “U” so it could be pronouced correctly.

I wanted the lead to reflect some elements of myself, but distorted enough to fit the nightmare of The Series of Silence. I took the letters of my own name, shook them up in a bag, and Seth fell out. He is me, albeit i was never an SFC like he was – which means he is a lot fitter, more handsome, more capable and with more secrets – and of course he has a much higher dry-cleaning bill!

Natalia is the steel spine of the family. It made sense that she would be based on my wife, Kelly-Ann. But why the name Natalia?

This is a nod to a bit of family history. For the first two weeks of her life, Kelly-Ann wasn’t Kelly-Ann. She was Natalie. That was the name until her father, who has since passed away, went to register her birth (after a few scoops in the local) and decided on a whim to change it to Kelly-Ann.

We tweaked it slightly to Natalia for the books as a logical progression of that story. In fact, if you have a keen eye, you might have spotted a few Freudian slips that got past the proofreaders in the first edition of The Silence We Hide, where Nat is accidentally referred to as Natalie. Old habits die hard.

Poor Izzy (Isabella). She gets dragged through the mill in these books, but her name has a lighter origin story. She is named after the girl my daughter, Eden, was supposed to be.

My late grandmother was called Isabella. We always planned to use the name. Then Twilight happened. The vampire saga was released just before Eden was born, and suddenly every other baby girl was being named Bella or Isabella. We pivoted to Eden, which suited her perfectly.

That left the name Isabella – or Izzy – sitting on the shelf. We dusted it off and gave it to the Overaughs’ daughter. It seemed like a fitting tribute to my grandmother, even if the fictional Izzy is currently dealing with more ghosts than vampires.

Finally, we have Jonah. This one is about the road not taken.

We have our son, Jericho, and our daughter, Eden. We always said that if we ever had a third child, and if it was a boy, he would be called Jonah. Mostly because “Jericho and Jonah” sounded like a cool partnership. A duo you wouldn’t want to mess with.

We stopped at two, so the real Jonah never arrived. Instead, he got drafted into the Overaugh family to face down the horrors of the past. Sorry, lad.