My sister once told me I was her twin born 4 years before her. Sometimes I think she’s right, we definitely have a ‘twin-thing’, always on the same wave-length, often having the same random thoughts and knowing when the other is down or happy even when we’re miles apart. (Yes, we’re weird okay?)

Maybe because of this I find myself writing twins into all my stories. Seriously, all of them! It’s strange, I have a few standard, non twin siblings but for the most part my characters are either only-children or have a twin. I think it’s a subconscious thing because I certainly don’t sit down and think ‘ah yes time to write about another set of twins’

But honestly look, here’s a list of twins I’ve written about and the stories they appear in…

• Isobel and Tristan Harper – St Victoria’s
• Audrey and Katherine Ruston- St Victoria’s
• Vicky and Robin Rose – Sagittarius
• Gabriel and Zlatan Cardinal- Elemental
• Maelon and Nerys Hansard- The Five Scolls

Okay, so in a list it doesn’t seem like that many but still!

Another thing I notice about my twins is that they’re always written as mysterious and/or glamorous in some way. The Harpers are from one of London’s wealthiest families and both seem like perfect specimen to my St Victoria’s protagonist Rosetta. Vicky and Robin Rose also hail from a wealthy family as do Audrey and Katherine Ruston (if anyone spots where I got my inspiration for their names (surname too) I instantly like you). Gabriel and Zlatan come from one of my (unfinished, highly stressing that point) fantasy stories, and are the mysterious twins whose moral compass is highly questionable. Maelon and Nerys Hansard are probably my favourite listed here, they come from my Five Scrolls series of stories (also incomplete as of now) they’re a badass pair who join my villains undercover in order to protect their younger, gifted sibling Tanwen.

The more I look at it, this seems to be the norm for twins in literature, take the interestingly named Charles and Camilla from Donna Tartt’s The Secret History (yes this book again – go and read it!!) these two or mysterious and glamorous and…well I don’t want to give away any spoilers so I’ll move on to another set of twins, George RR Martin’s Jaime and Cersei Lannister from the Song of Ice and Fire series (that’s Game of Thrones for you foundation paper people) glamorous, powerful and prone to some sibling love, once again these twins are two of the most intriguing characters both in and out of universe.

I was driving on the motorway with my mother yesterday and she came up with a twin game to play (no lie this happened) where we took turns coming up with unusual names for twins for each letter of the alphabet, with the two of us alternating between choosing male and female names. It turned out to be pretty fun (it got us from Bridgend to Llanelli in no time that’s for sure) and some of the sets of names got me itching to write more, here’s some of my favourites;

• Brownie and Ballantine (I chose Brownie)
• Delphi and Darwin (my mother chose Darwin which I’m sure Ross wanted to name his child in Friends before Rachel vetoed it)
• Nubia and Nico (I’ve already written a Nico but hey-ho)
• Vespa and Virgil (this has villains written all over it)
• Wilson and Willow (surname Williams? Come on, you know it’s gonna happen)

I think it’s safe to say I’ve definitely got a twin-thing.