Corto Maltese Villain Procedure

Recently, on my main blog, I held a competition to find a villain for my next novella, a 'Corto Maltese' adventure called The Coandă Effect. A total of forty people volunteered their names. I printed out the names, cut them into strips, put them in a hat and selected three. Here's a photo of the names in the hat:



And here's a more readable list of those names:

* Simon Kurt Unsworth * Simon Marshall-Jones * George Ibarra * Neil Jackson * Fiona Duffin * Simon Bestwick * Gary McMahon * Allyson Bird * Ethyl Deadgirl * Chris Ward * Hannah F. Lawson * Thomas J. Newton * Bob Lock * Luísa Ferreira * Tom Alaerts * Emma Murros * Catherine E. Mann * Matthew Revert * Brendan Connell * Phillip Stecco * Jason Rolfe * Gino Dros * Margaret Hindle * Huw Rees * Kathleen Probert * Jukka-Petteri Halme * Ian Alexander Martin * Jim Steel * Christopher Richard Barker * Jérôme Charlet * Joel Holmberg * Mads Pedersen * Mihaila Adrian * Daniel Corrick * John L. Probert * Mick Curtis * Nathaniel Tapley * Stephen Bacon * Caroline Grist * James Branson

The three names that came out of the hat first were:



The first name will be the main villain of The Coandă Effect; the second and third names will be lesser villains in the same story; Tom Alaerts will also appear as a lesser villain (this was privately arranged). I hope to use most of the other names in future stories, with the permission of the owners, of course!