More than meets the eye in A Wolf in Duke’s Clothing, Susanna Allen’s new Regency era Shapeshifter mash up. When I had the idea to combine the Regency Era and Shapeshifter genres, I was looking forward to playing with the clash between the two very different worlds: the manners and mores of the former and the sensuality and instinct of the latter. What I hadn’t bargained for was how much fun I would have coming up with names for my characters. Naming is important and it can be hard. It’s a big commitment and it informs the character’s whole fictional life. When writing contemporary romance, it’s a little easier as, say, the last name of a character would reflect their ethnic background—are they of Irish or Italian descent—and that in turn helped with deciding on the first name, and vice versa. I remember being totally stumped about what to call a secondary male in a work in progress and started scrolling through Nameberry for inspiration, which worked insofar as it planted a bunch of names in my subconscious and three days later my brain offered up the one that fit best.  Authors make great use of the baby-naming sites available…