I’m sorry for the delay, but life this week was crazy. Crazy like ohmigod, why did I schedule all of the family’s appointments within one two-day span and ouch, excruciating pain requiring a dentist and novacaine and what do you mean school starts next week and holy crap, now there’s a hurricane coming? kinda crazy.

I enjoyed reading the suggestions for Mary’s maiden name so much. And some of them even made me a little sniffly. I love family names. My oldest son: first name is my husband’s 3x-great-grandmother’s maiden name and his middle name is her daughter’s maiden name. Youngest: we wanted to name him after my husband’s father, who passed away when my husband was very young, but there was already a junior and a third and so on. Since the family came from Ireland, we used the Irish form of the name. His middle name is my husband’s name. So I love names that honor family history.

In the end, I chose the name that just sounded the most “right” to me (which is a weird writer thing almost impossible to explain other than “it just seemed right”) and Mary’s maiden name is Gifford.

So the first winner, who offered Gifford as a suggestion, is Corinne Bridges.

The second winner, chosen by random draw, is Melanie Findley.

Corinne and Melanie, please email me (shannonstacey@gmail.com) and tell me if you’d like your gift certificate to be for Amazon, Barnes & Noble or All Romance eBooks.

And thank you, everybody! There were so many fabulous names in the list!