Fact: In the last two years, I have had no less than 10 manuscripts cross my desk set in the small town of Willow Creek. At the point when these crossed my desk, there were already a few published romance and cozy mystery series set in places called Willow Creek, so my guess is that Chat GPT was just regurgitating what it saw as a quaint-sounding place that readers already liked. But you know what readers really like?

Uniqueness. A memorable town name. Like Penny Reid's Green Valley, Lucy Score's Storyville, Lyla Sage's Meadowlark, Laurie Gilmore's Dream Harbor.

And finding a town name like that isn't that hard. Choose just one of the strategies below, and I guarantee you'll have 3 cute, quirky names for your romance's small town in less than ten minutes.

1. Name the town after the state/country flower or tree.

2. Name the town after the state/country bird.

3. Name the town after the state sport. Fun fact, not all states have state sports, but Maryland does! It's jousting. Yes. Really.

   

4. Name the town after a famous (and as unproblematic as possible) historical figure, preferably a little-known one so you don't end up with somewhere like "Lincolnville" (which already exists).

5. Look at the historical languages in your town's area—Spanish, old English, native languages, etc.—and use one of the old words that were used to describe the area.

6. Name the town after a fictional historical figure that did something unique, like created the town's first brewery, or saved the town from an influx of wild boars.

7. Name the town after your character's family, a la Schitt's Creek.

8. Name the town after a famous festival that's been held there every year for x number of years—even better if the festival celebrates something niche, like wild garlic, a specific type of tree, or a long-forgotten holiday only celebrated in that part of the country.

9. Follow in the UK's footsteps and name it something adorable/weird like Shitterton, Bellenden Gardens, Bitchfield, Cockermouth. Or, follow in the footsteps of my home state and go with something like "Scaggsville," which never failed to tickle me.

   

10. Name the town after a really small or really large real or fictional natural feature, like an extremely small hill with a fun nickname, such as "Sitter Mountain".

    Until next time, happy reading and writing!