Character Names

For me, one of the harder part about setting a nano in another world is names. There's a balance between too normal and needing a pronunciation guide that needs to be reached, so after going through a couple of baby names books (and most importantly, one organized by country) I'm going with a combination of more odd/obscureish American, English and French names. I'd tried to avoid this, wanting something with a not-english base as the MCs are from north america but there's enough odd names to be had that it should work.

The three sources likely share enough of the same cognates to work and also fit the idea of the world as a refugee vs. my idea of giving each major centre a different country as a naming basis. The nobility travel, as do merchants, so names and naming would spread, ditto with naming children after the king, heirs to the real, important nobles and such. That's old  magic, naming your child after someone famous to deflect harm from them.

Tannis, Tandie. Wray. Artita.Tailleffer. Sorel. Eloi. Cyprien. The names will sound odd and unusual without being all that unusual in many respects, which should be half the fun. I'll likely end up reserving names like Cyprien (derived from Cyprus) for the nobility as a general rule of thumb. A naming system has been set up for the other two major species in the novel so this is at least sorted as a major impediment to, say, making a bevvy of secondary characters and writing out a plot.

The latter of which I must give more thought to. I know how one of the major antagonists dies. I have the scene in mind where the novel begins. And that is it. 

Back Cover Blurb (nano)

When he was 12 years old, Jake Sinclair was abducted to another world. There was a war on. These things happen, and the sacrifice of his innocence was a price the magicians of the Kingdom of the Seven Keys were willing to pay to defeat a foe too great for their own magics to overcome. A boy with the magic to make wishes come true walked their world and an entire civilization fell with his aid before he was spirited back home.

Two years had passed, years of frantic search and worry. He told no one of where he'd been or what he'd seen, convincing himself it had to be a dream in order to keep on living. The family pulled their lives together,his silence becoming theirs. Time passed, and wounds were not healed but left to hibernate.

Now, as Jake is up for promotion at work and planning his marriage with his fiancée, and they have come for him again. And this time his younger brother is dragged with him to the Kingdom, where they must face old ghosts and each other while seeking only to return to the world they know.

Tagline: Trapped on another world to answer for crimes committed when he was a boy, all Jake Sinclair wants is to return home before rent is due, his finance leaves him and his car is impounded.

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The tagline is too long, but other than that this isn't too bad for a blurb written out rather quickly. It is likely too backstory/info-dumpy for a real blurb, which would probably more focus on the war crimes, but it works for now I think.

... now back to adding locations in the Kingdom and giving thought to naming conventions and the fact that the story NEEDS more characters in it.

This post is for me. So there.

The Higher Ground remake has now been titled The Second Theft. A horrible title, but better than nothing at all. A little bit.

Things that are done:
The main characters have been fleshed out, roughly. Jake needs to find his anger, Thomas to let go of his and the larger arc of the story is the brothers coming to terms with all the lies they've told each other and the mistakes each has made regarding the other.  It is easy to think, "I've changed! Why doesn't anyone see that?" and not give them the benefit of the doubt of changing as well.

Things that are not done:
Everything else. I do know the end scene of the novel and how at least one antagonist meets their end. And I think it has to begin roughly like the first version did because their lives before they are dumped in the other world is important, as is Jake's new car.

I need to flesh out the Kingdom of the Seven Keys. Right now my rough notes make it an ugly aristocratic-driven kingdom with magic reserved for the rich and wealthy and most crimes being punished with death. Which makes sense, given the transition in the thousand years since The War but it does remain woefully generic. Sooo....

• The world (faerie, according to humans) originally 'belonged' to the hingari, or at least -- next to the People -- they were the first inhabitants. As such its shape needs to be fluid, no map adequately fitting the territory. The seven keys/locks are old magic that allows seven city-towns to remain solid and serve as the focal points for the Kingdom. They don't move, so it is easy to find them. The rest of the kingdom is less easy to pin down, and movement between towns can range from an hour to several days, which makes travel uncommon and difficult.
• This shall fit into the idea of the middle ages and how people never knew the wider world since no one left home. Add to this the idea that the Kingdom is deliberately encouraging this looseness of geography and holding back scientific (and magical) advances that can allow the Kingdom to better fit together in order to keep the power structure intact.
• At present, due to lack of training for many, most magics are small and unimportant. 
• (finish later)

Ah, revising novels...

It turned out I had considered re-writing Higher Ground briefly last year, to the tone of about 8 pages of notes on characters and the setting. Which apparently had involved changing the names of all the characters, a truly ridiculous amount of detail for the setting. Seriously, brain: what possibly use could notes on the education system of the Kingdom possibly have for a novel involving 2 brothers ending up on another world? And, alas, all the setting and character notes tossed out the baby with the bathwater, as it were.

I believe I was attempting a clean start to the novel by altering even the relationship between the brothers but one reader who had liked the first version intimated, half of why the novel worked was because of the idea of the younger brother rescuing the older. So I'm basically deleting all that as useless and building notes from the original idea, though I think I will not even attempt to include some things that didn't make even the original version of the story.

For example, I had notes on a 'species' called the Krisk, as follows:
"Krisk: What the coat hanger people call themselves, or perhaps the sound they make when parts of their body rub together. Their language is very hard for others to understand and since most people who meet them are more concerned with not being shredded and hung on various hangers little is known about them at all except that they’re very scary. "

... so, yeah, somehow I never did use that at all in the 2004 version. And won't in any other, for some reason.

The fun of resurrection

Higher Ground is a story I wrote in 2002. Some people liked it, I finished it, re-read it and pretty much didn't care for it. (Major plot holes, last minute 'wait, there is no villain! Shove one in!' stuff, the usual fun of doing a draft of a novel without, say, plotting more than a couple of chapters ahead.) However, as much as I disliked the end result, I did have a soft spot for the core concept of it:

Why do characters who end up in Fantasy World stay?

Not everyone would want to, or should, but I thought it would be focus on a character whose only goal is to get back home because of mundane issues like the new car getting towed, work, rent and so forth. As such I am entirely re-doing the novel from scratch and altering a lot of character roles. Or shall, in time; I'm doing up notes at present so things are more solidified in my head when I start out.