One of the things about running a website is that you get a statistics page (‘stats’ to you and me) that tells you all sorts of useful things about how people are using it. The obvious thing is how many people reach it each day, and which pages they look at, but the fun thing – to me – is how they got there. Because one of the things it tells you is what they typed into a Google search in order to get to your site.
I checked my stats page today, and recently some poor person typed in something like ‘what is edie’s surname in sophia bennett’s threads?’. And they obviously got through to this site, but I have a nasty feeling they didn’t find the answer to their question.
Because I’m not sure it’s there.
I instantly tried to think of all the girls’ surnames. It took a while, because I hardly ever need to use them in the books. They’re Nonie’s best friends and she doesn’t need to mention their surnames much. Nonie’s is Chatham, I remember, because I named her after the street beside the library where I was writing. Crow’s is Lamogi, which took me ages and ages of internet research, because I wanted something from the appropriate area of Uganda. Jenny’s is Merritt, which I use a bit because Jenny gets referred to in newspaper articles about her acting. But Edie? I’m sure I gave her a surname when I created her character, but I honestly can’t remember what it is. I’ve had a look in a couple of manuscripts, but I can’t find it.
Did I ever actually use it? If you’ve read the books and you happen to know, do remind the author! Then maybe I can put some poor internet researcher out of her misery.