Jayne and a boy named Sue

I'm almost finished with a manuscript and I am in desperate need of a name for my hero. We're talking the last chapter of the book, mind you. The thing is, I never liked the original name that I'd picked but I couldn't find the right one and I didn't want to wait until inspiration struck. So I just started writing with a "place holder" name. Kept thinking I'd come up with a better one somewhere over the course of writing the book. Unfortunately, nothing brilliant came to mind.

But now it's crunch time. This guy needs a name.

Names are tricky. An unusual or difficult name stops a reader cold. I still get email from people who want to know how to pronounce Iphiginia in my old Amanda Quick title, MISTRESS. But that's nothing compared to the mail I get when I accidentally name a hero "Sue", or, rather, the equivalent.

If you ever read the hardcover edition of WICKED WIDOW, you met a hero named Artemis Hunt. If you read the paperback edition, you knew him as Artemas Hunt. Artemis, of course, is the name of a female Greek goddess -- goddess of the hunt, fact, which only made the whole thing more ludicrous. Artemas is the masculine version of the name. Thanks to a lot of sharp-eyed readers, I was able to get the name changed for the paperback edition but, trust me, I'll never go near that name again. I admit that I'm little weak on Greek mythology and, yes, I was a huge fan of WILD, WILD WEST. But, really, it was just plain embarrassing.

And now we have Cruz Sweetwater in OBSIDIAN PREY. How could I go wrong with a masculine-sounding name like Cruz? So hard-edged. So macho. So cool. So feminine! Aack. One of my Spanish-speaking readers wrote to tell me that Cruz is a feminine name in Spanish as in "Maria de la Cruz" or "Santa Cruz". Again, I have no excuse. I took Spanish in high school and did two more years of that beautiful language in college in a town called Santa Cruz. I am mortified.

And just to complicate things, so many names that used to be considered masculine have become feminine in recent years: Jordan, Cameron, Ashley, Drew, Madison, etc.

Back to choosing a name for my hero. What about you? What happens when you hit an odd or hard-to-pronounce name in a book? Does it ruin the story for you?