By Any Other Name

Explain why you chose your blog’s title and what it means to you.

I really struggled to come up with a good name for my blog.  I wanted something clever without being cutesy, easily identifiable as mine without being too obvious.

A Good One is a variation of my name:  A Goodwin.    A little on the cutesy side, but it’s also a nod to my Aunt Marian, who never tired of teasing me about my married name.    Every time the words “good one” came up in a conversation, Marian would wink at me and murmur “Goodwin!”

Not a particularly funny joke, but it was sort of a secret code between Marian and me.  She wasn’t always the world’s nicest person, and her influence on my life has probably been more negative than positive, but she’s only been gone for a few years and that loss still hurts.

I miss her.

She always referred to my in-laws as The Good Ones instead of the Goodwins, so my blog’s name is also a reminder of just how lucky I was to marry into this particular family.

Another reason for calling my blog A Good One is that it hints at my pen name:  A.J. Goode.  “A” comes from my first name, “Goode” is part of my last name, and “J” . . .

Well, the letter “J” stands for absolutely nothing.  It just sounds good there.