“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other word would smell as sweet.”
I’m pre-empting a review by a friend of mine of STARFIRE ANGELS to bring you this little tidbit. See, I kind of surprised her between the draft she originally read and the published version she’s reading now to review. Hee hee. I have this little bitty sense of humor that sneaks into my stories.
Anyone who’s read A TURN OF CURSES may have discovered how that works in the scheme of naming things. For instance, in ATOC, the kingdom Selina is trying to reach is Vastorn. Umm…get it? Okay, maybe not so obvious, unless I give some background. Vast + Torn = Vastorn, which actually happened by accident, because it was after I named it that I realized just how appropriate that was. It’s a large land torn by the white prince’s unscrupulous acts to become the next heir. Also, Selina passes through the Sunders Mountains. For those, I purposely sought a word that meant to break something in pieces. I searched at thesaurus.com and found sunder. It sounded right, so I stuck it in there. Feyquin was also a conjoining of two words, with the primary focus on “equine”.
In LEGEND OF THE WHITE DRAGON, my online e-serial, I’ve inserted North Dakota towns aplenty. Many are modified slightly (forex, Cando became Candro, and Fessenden became Fessen), but there are also completely unaffected names throughout the books.
Now, in STARFIRE ANGELS, I’ve done something fun again and fitting with the story. Where I hated not having a name for the machine that can destroy worlds, but which was designed for wormhole travel between worlds, I came up with one. Instead of the lame “Great Machine”, I changed it to Heffin’s Gate. Okay, I hear you groaning. Heffin by itself is not the issue, and it certainly fits the naming scheme of the species that created it. But put together with “gate” (it’s a bit reminiscent of Stargate, I’ll admit, but much cooler 
), and you have a recipe for a pun. Heffin sad aloud sounds much like heaven. I did that on purpose, yes. It hit me, like many ideas, in the shower. I couldn’t resist. It was far better than what I had as a place marker, which was all “the great machine” was supposed to be. How do we know that that’s not the reason for humans believing in a gateway to heaven, specifically the word heaven?
Also, I do mention an “angel” with the name of Saffir, who has blue wings. Major groans. Yes. Yes. I know. But that name was actually from the original story over twelve years ago. And the name of the empress, Marin, stayed the same as the antagonist in the original story, except in that one, Marin was the sister of the heroine’s mother and jealous of her neice inheriting the Starfire. STARFIRE ANGELS is so much better than that. Besides, that was back in the days when I adored Gargoyles, so you can guess what the species looked like then. It’s so much better that they turned out to be angelic aliens from a far more advanced world. Trust me.
Anyway, my friend Tez had to give me grief about those names, so I figured why not explain it, because someone out there will be rolling their eyes. I had fun using them, and maybe some of you, good readers, have enjoyed finding out some of the secrets behind my writing.
Oh, and overall, Tez likes SA. Whew!
