#and ignoring countless cultural treasure troves to focus on her own deteriorating mental health!!’

[chdarling]

Hi Ch! I don't know if anyone else sent you this ask-but what does CH stand for? Like, is there a story behind that name?(can you tell I'm a sucker for good stories? Like your last enemy series.Oh,and about that, take all the time you want, we will still be here when you decide to post it.)Does it feel like overkill to say that your books are better than most published books I've read? Because it's true. The only other book I have read that captured switching povs so well is six of crows.

Ohhh, there is a story, as a matter of fact, but it’s more about the Darling, than the CH. It’s a little lengthy and melodramatic, so strap in. 🤣

So, I was in my early twenties and I was working in Asia for a stretch of time. For reasons I won’t go into here, it was a very difficult time in my life. I ended up quitting that job and because I couldn’t bear to go home, I bought a plane ticket to Scotland. I figured if I was going to be depressed and miserable I might as well do it in my favorite place in the world…so to Edinburgh I flew. It was a questionable decision, for many reasons. Primarily because — and this may shock you — suddenly finding oneself in Scotland does not, actually, cure depression. Who knew??

So I hadn’t really planned anything. I had a tiny little attic room in a hostel I could barely afford and well over a week of blank, depressing space to fill. I was dangerously depressed and basically broke because I’d just bought a foolish plane ticket halfway across the planet. So I spent my days mostly just walking the stretch of the city and eating pre-packaged salmon & cheese sandwiches. 🙃

One of the places I stumbled upon and that I kept returning to was Greyfriars Kirkyard. I’m a bit of a graveyard junkie (I like to collect names), so I spent a fair amount of time just wandering around, writing down names that caught my fancy. Good, free fun. 😂 At one point I came across a particularly old, age-crusted tombstone that just said:

Thomas Darling

Writer

That was it. Just…”writer.” And I remember thinking “……..that’s the dream.” 🤣

And I was at a point in my life where I really didn’t want to be me anymore, I wanted to be literally anyone else, even a dead Scottish dude from god knows when. And I thought ‘if I ever manage to write something decent, I’m going to publish it under Darling.’

Fast forward to 2020 and I’m trying to come up with a pen name for AO3 and a little gremlin in the back of my brain goes: “Heh heh. Darling.”

Oh, also, I learned after the fact that that graveyard is where a lot of the HP names came from, so it felt doubly appropriate for TLE.

The C.H. isn’t really anything, just that I’ve always appreciated the vaguely romantic anonymity of initials as a pen name. C is my first initial, H is something else (not any of my names), but I shall keep it a secret for privacy reasons :)

Anyway, that’s it! Not that much to it, really, just a little inside joke with myself. Sorry for the excessively long trip down memory lane but that was kind of fun 😂

And thank you so much for the kind words!! 🥺🥺🥺 That truly means so much to me ❤️❤️❤️