What's in a Name?

Why Heatheridge House? The name has a long history for me. "Heather Ridge" was the apartment complex in Kent, Washington that my husband and I moved into when we were first married. The place was nothing that special, but I loved the name. I thought, if I lived in England where houses and estates have names rather than addresses, that's what I would call my home. Years later, when I applied for a business license and had to pick a name to go with it, I finally got my chance to use it: "Heather Ridge Arts." Fast forward a few years more to when I became serious about writing. While working on my first novel, "The Darcys of Pemberley" (a sequel to Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice"), I took delight in naming everything along the way - people and places too. So, when the Bingleys moved to a new estate in Staffordshire, I called it Heatheridge House. I will probably never have a chance to live in England myself, but my imagination spends a lot of time there - often in an old stone manor happily situated on a hill overlooking woods and water.