“… This is Sydney Brennan. So she says. I haven’t decided what her real name is yet.”
I tried not to cringe. I changed my name legally over a decade ago, but it still felt like a deep, dark secret I could be arrested for. Oh, the irony if he managed to guess my real name. I stammered a “nice to meet you.”
Back to Lazarus, Richard introducing Sydney to his secretary, Chapter 10
She may not have been born with that name, but I never thought my private investigator would be called anything other than Sydney Brennan.
I’ve probably mentioned elsewhere that I was one of those kids that told stories to any hapless adults willing to listen (or at least not rude enough to walk away), until I could draw them, and then write them. I even came up with a pen name.
I’m sure somewhere in a pile of notebooks, written in still slightly-adolescent, loopy and too-large handwriting, over and over like an unrequited crush, you’ll find the name: Sydney K. … Well, maybe I’ll keep the surname to myself a little while longer. (It has a very fantasy genre feel to it, and someday I might want it for a fantasy novel I dreamed up a few months ago.)
Anyway, I liked Sydney because it could be either gender, which seemed like an advantage to me as a budding young marketer. I wanted to keep my middle initial because it was like keeping a piece of me, and because I liked writing Ks. (My fondness for writing Ls is probably a partial explanation for the surname, but it was a completely made-up word.)
So Sydney was my childhood pen name… what about Brennan? Well, that’s your challenge.
I’ll send a free signed paperback copy of Back to Lazarus to the first person to deduce the origin of the surname “Brennan.”
(Alternatively, if you already have a paperback copy of BTL, I’ll send you a signed copy of my next release, but of course you’d be waiting a bit longer for that.) I will say that, as with “Sydney,” the choice of Brennan lies within my own biography. And it’s not from a secret story I haven’t told you, but from a part of my previous life you can get from the website.
Enter by sharing your ideas in the comments below or on my Facebook Page. Good luck!
Here is my guess: I know your afffinity for New Orleans, so maybe, Brennan’s Restaurant in New Orleans who have Bananas Foster to die for! Nodin and I ate there in January 2000 before the National Championship Game, courtesy of a pharmaceutical rep (ah, the good old days; now we get no dinners.) I also went there once as a child with my parents, but only remembered the place when I saw it again.
Great guess, Lissa! That was Paul’s guess as well, so you’re in good company, but unfortunately, you’re not correct. Maybe if I’d ever had the pleasure of their Bananas Foster, it would have inspired me to write the Sydney Brennan Chef-Sleuth series. 😉
2nd guess which would have been my first guess if I’d thought about it more, William Brennan, supreme court justice.
Bingo–give that woman a prize! 😉 Drop me an email at judy(Replace this parenthesis with the @ sign)judykwalker.com with your mailing address and Sydney will be on the next plane.
WAHOO!!!