S is for… Well, S, Really

Why is it such a significant letter in my life?

My first wife’s name is Sheila. These days I live near Saddleworth but I’m just as close to the town of Shaw, and many years ago, when I first became a trucker, I worked for a man named Shaw. It was probably the latter two coincidences that encouraged me to choose the pen name David Shaw for some of my early work.

This bias towards the nineteenth letter of the alphabet is just as evident in my written work. Joe Murray and his pals live in the fictitious town of Sanford, and because STAC is the acronym for the Sanford 3rd Age Club, the STAC Mysteries begin with an “S”. The Lady Concepta Rand-Epping is the central character in my forthcoming series, the Spookies Mysteries. As a child, she could not pronounce the name Concepta, so it was shortened to Cepta, and it became Sceptre. That initial, along with those of Pete and Kevin give us the name Spookies.

I still dabble with sci-fi and I had this short series of comedies, Space Truckers. I also have another, half finished work, a contender for its own series, the eponymous hero of which is Sharn.

It’s not like I do this intentionally. It just seems to work out that way.

Maybe it’s a subconscious wish fulfilment. Maybe I secretly wish I’d been christened Sam Sorenson.