Remember the name; it's on your keyboard

People have asked me about my character's name. Why Qwerty? Why not Alan? Or Adam? Or Eddie? I could've named him something decent and spared  uncle Donald's nerves (Donald Gibble hates the name). But no. I had to go and invent something ridiculous. It was all for a reason, though. 

To discover the genesis of this strange name, we need to go back in time to the year - oh, I don't know... Was it 2003? 2004? It was an early afternoon and I was not more than 20 years old. I was in the process of sitting at the desk, which was holding an old PC. I probably planned to play another round of Solitaire...

And then it happened. As I was about to lower my backside on an ergonomic chair, I took a quick glance at the black keyboard and noticed the string of letters: Q W E R T Y. It could be a name, I thought. For a boy. Why hasn't anyone thought of that already?

So I slumped on that soft chair and, instead of playing cards, I started MS Word. Suddenly the opening scene, the one with Qwerty sitting in the garden, explicitly ignoring working bees, having barely avoided aunt Adela's saucepan landing on his head, entered my mind. And there he was: Qwerty Seymore, with his dark hair, brown eyes and in a bit of a pickle...

I had a little problem with the surname, too. At first Qwerty was called Seymour. Nothing unusual there, really. But I like word plays too much to just make things normal. So when I made a mistake once and typed it as "Saymore", it became clear to me that "say" and "more" must form obvious parts of my hero's second name. Hence Seymore. I mean, ha ha, right?

So there you have it: Qwerty Seymore. It's on most keyboards around the world, so it should be easy to remember. Need I say more? 

"Qwerty: The History" is now available here: 

amazon.com

amazon.co.uk

Kindle (free for Kindle Unlimited)