Archive for 2009

I’m Not Very Good With Names

Posted August 12, 2009 under Writing | Tagged: , | 10 Comments

It’s not just in real life that they are not my strength.

Sometimes it takes me forever to find that perfect name for a character, and I sometimes go through different variations and stages of names to find “the perfect one”. And until then I just have placeholders.

One example would be one who has yet to have a name, or make an appearance. I’m not really in such of a hurry to give him a name as, in the world of the Blood Bound universe, he does not appear until the third book (along with the rest of the Canadian vampire embassy… yes, BB gets into the vampire politics even more from book two onwards, and three is the big one). And so, in conversation, we simply refer to him as “Canadian Lover”, “Canadian Consort”, “Rivka’s Lover” and the like. While he is definitely not defined solely by his relationship to Rivka, the queen of vampires in Canada, (his maker, his lover, his queen and more), it’s just easiest to call him that. My beta sometimes calls him “Callum”, after the actor she insists would have to play him should there be a movie.1

But the real character that inspired me to write this blog entry was one from The Circled Green, my upcoming NaNo project. When we meet her, in the prologue, she is young, beautiful, and dying. For the rest of the book she is just a presence, a memory, a tie to the past that keeps the husband she left behind from remarrying even though he should, and the one that follows her daughter about, for reasons both good or bad. While the names of other characters (such as Aurora, Ciar, Duncan, Emily) came pretty easily, her name was very elusive.

Eventually we started referring to her as “Dead Mother” and then “Dead Marni”2 and after a while I began wishing that Marni was actually a suitable name for her, except it didn’t make sense, given her background.

But finally, after weeks and weeks of looking and wishing and referring to her as Dead Marni/Dead Mother, I found something. It fit, it was pretty, and it was perfect. She now has a name.

Sorcha. ♥

  1. Why do I not just go with this name for him? Callum is the name of one of the MC’s stepbrothers in The Superhero Diaries. The other is Paul. I’m hesitant to re-use names in this fashion, although it’s not completely off the table. [↩]
  2. Yes, after this Dead Marni, the one from Repo! The Genetic Opera [↩]

Quarter Of The Way There!

Posted July 31, 2009 under Writing | Tagged: | 3 Comments

A couple of days ago, my beta, JK issued me a challenge. That challenge? Reach the 20 000 word mark by the end of the month. And do you know what? Even with a few bumps in the road1 I have managed to do that with just over four hours to spare.

What makes this even more exciting is that I only reached the 10k mark on the 15th of this month – that means I wrote 10k – doubled my total – in half a month. If I keep this speed up2 that means I can write 20 000 words of a draft a month. And that can result in one 80 000 word novel in four months.

And that means my goal is completing the first draft of Lionheart before NaNo – where I plan to write as much of The Circled Green3 as possible – is a very distinct possibility indeed. Let’s hope that is the case after all, so JK can have plenty of stuff to beta. :P

In the meantime: 20 000 words! Yippee!

  1. Like the day that my computer was busted, and I had to spend the day writing by hand… and then typing it up, or the fact I’d forgotten quiz night [↩]
  2. And it does not seem like it is impossible, as I have discovered that I can write more than 1000 words a day if I focus [↩]
  3. My Victorian Era faerie story [↩]