After much pain in my left arm (and eventually the right), I have finished typing up chapter 15. Whee! Now I need to let my arm rest a while. It’s covered from bicep to palm in goat wrap. I’m thinking that reading sounds like a good way to give my left elbow and wrist a chance to recuperate. My right wrist could use the time off too. The problem with trying to give my joints a break is that my brain won’t take a vacation. I’ll likely come up with lots of ideas and scenes that I simply must write down somewhere. Actually, I really ought to just find my tape recorder again and take my notes that way for a while. Neh. It might happen, it might not.

Unrelated to my arthritis but related to the novels, I’ve been amusing myself coming up with names for my characters. I’ve mostly been working on names for everyone in the second book because there are so many people who stop to stay at the inn where the main characters are living. Out of sheer laziness (or brilliance, depending on how you look at it), I’ve often found myself using friends’ names as well as family members’ names. For those of you who could read the tiny names on the picture of the previous post, you’d have read the following: Stella, Stasia, Zelphie, and Lethia. I’ve got several family members who should recognize those names right away. 😉 There’s also the Muhler familiy. The parents’ names are Anthony (Tony) and Rose. The kids are as follows from oldest to youngest with their real name first and nickname in parentheses: Rose Jr. (Rosie), Anne (Annie), Gerard (Gerry), Elizabeth (Beth or Bethie), and Peter (Pete or Petey). Any clues as to where those names came from? Sometimes it’s just so beneficial to come from a large family, lol.

In addition to putzing around with the names for the tertiary characters in Book 2 (basically, scenery characters), I finally decided I simply had to come up with a last name for O. After all, he is one of the two main characters, and Sol has had a last name since the beginning (it’s Woods). The following is basically the run-down of the thought processes that led me to O’s last name. This is more or less how I write my notes when I am taking them for the novels, so please excuse the stream-of-consciousness aspect.

      I’ve been editing and reworking parts of Book 1, and I decided I simply had to give O his last name in this book because when else will Sol learn it to be able to use his last name to find information about him on Hell when she goes there in Book 8? Besides, it makes sense for his introduction to have his full name (as far as he gives it–he refuses to go by Oskar). So I had to come up with a last name. Had to.

      The thought process was this: his name is Oskar like Oscar the Grouch except he spells it differently and really isn’t a grouch most of the time (except when he’s drinking; he has a drinking problem Sol doesn’t know about). I figured I’d look up the French word for ‘grouch’ anyway (râleur) just in case I liked it. As I was looking it up, I thought of other adjectives that would describe O better. I thought, “Hey, he’s handsome; how about ‘beau’?” O Beau [oboe]. Hell no! I did laugh really hard at this though. So I went to discuss it with Ian.

      I pointed out to him that Sol’s last name is Woods because of the last half of Ringwald. So I pondered using the first half of Ringwald for O. The French have a few words for ‘ring’ depending on the context such as alliance for wedding bands, anneau for a simple band, and bague just generically. Ian really liked the idea of the last name meaing ‘ring’ because when Sol gets confused at his explanation of his name, he explains it’s a ring (meaning his last name’s translation) but she thinks he means the shape of the letter O since it looks like a ring. Funny! Then I realized that ‘anneau’ would be ‘ano’ in the way I’m treating French in IPA, and that could be confused with ‘an O,’ especially with readers who don’t speak French to pronounce it right. So the joke becomes “O Ano” “An O?” “Just O. Ano as in ‘ring.'” *Snicker* Or like “Bond, James Bond,” “O Ano” (O, an O).

      At any rate, Ian then pointed out the genders are switched. O’s last name is yonic (sp? jonic? yonec?) whereas Sol’s is phallic. So a tree with a ring around it may be misleading on the cover. I did point out that the names wouldn’t sound as good with the genders flipped. Solennelle Ring and O Forêt or O Bois [hautbois…French for oboe…dammit! Not that again!] So I’ll keep them as is. O now has a last name at last! Now so long as he keeps it! The main villan’s name changed a LOT! Jeerdarl > Néros > Brinston. Messy.