Author Q & A (Part 2)

As promised, though a little late, here is Part 2 of the Q&A responses. I was happily surprised by the depth and number of questions received, so it’s taking me a bit longer than originally planned to answer them thoughtfully.

The next three questions appear below in today’s edition—and these great questions focus on characters and character creation.

If you asked a question and you still don’t see it here, no worries! It will be posted here in part 3, which I will be working on this weekend (and all questions will eventually be added together here on the new Author Q&A page once all the posts have been made).

Thanks again to everyone for round two, I’m still having a blast responding!

Part 2Tell me more about Elinora, and her growth as a character.

Oh this is good one! Elinora was a very fun character to write. She came very natural as I share a lot of similarities with her, though of course there is a lot about her that was exaggerated for story purposes. But as someone who was extremely shy as a child, and still deals with deep shades of it at unexpected times as an adult even, I had a lot to draw from and it was easy to write her physical reactions to her anxieties.

Elinora’s story arc was meant in part to be that of a very hesitant, anxious teen on the edge of growing up and leaving home, and how that hesitancy holds her back from accomplishing things. Through the discovery of Henry, seeing how brave he is in the face of the fear and perils he faces with his missing family, and also seeing how her own fears begin to impact him, as well as seeing the conditions at the circus, she is absolutely pushed to confront her anxieties. She also learns that her drive to help others far surpasses the need to covet and protect her timidity.

So as Tillie is changing and learning to temper her rash and sometimes reckless choices in the name of excitement, Elinora is meanwhile doing just the opposite. By the end of the story she is ready to step up and take risks to help others, which is something I hope younger kids can learn from as we live in a world in deep need of those who are willing to make the extra effort to help their fellow humans, animals, as well as our planet.

I’m always curious how and why an author chooses names for their book’s characters. You have very interesting names in your book. How did you go about your choices?

Thank you! I enjoyed naming the characters and some of it was simply picking names that I like. Others have reasons and stories behind them.

Elinora had a different name when I first started writing the story down, in fact many of the characters did. For her name—I absolutely love The Beatles song Eleanor Rigby, and loved the name (I of course changed the spelling a bit). Both my parents were huge (huge) Beatles fans and I grew up listening to them, so it was also a great way to pay tribute to that.

Others were deviations of names that have meaning for me personally, twists of names of people that have inspired me, and some, especially surnames, for their actual meaning. Some were named by my dad (Ghant, among many others), my kids (including Mudd, named by my son, and Coddlefin’s first name by my daughter), my sister (Rodene), and other family members. Many of the animals in the circus were named after dogs and cats and pet rats and fish in our family’s lives through the years.

One was named after a famous stuffed animal belonging to my nephew when he was young (that would be Boing!). Pipe I named when I was 5. Henry is 100% my dad’s and he’s been Henry since the beginning of time, as has Mister Squirrel, aka Mister.

Another fun tidbit, Coddlefin’s first name, after remaining the same for years and years, was renamed right at the last toward the end of writing the last draft when I realized it was the same name as one of my friend’s young sons. I did not want him to read the book and see his name used for an unscrupulous villain! My daughter came up with the new name, a very funny and apt tribute to a certain unappealing, contemporary US public figure—Théodore. We added the é for a little flair.

I also paid mind to the advice not to have too many character names that sounded similar or began with the same letter.

Interestingly, as I was pondering the surname of Graham and Jamie I came up with O’Conor for no good reason, so I was very surprised when I discovered that it means “lover of hounds,” Henry being a Morlish (fictional region) wolfhound. Perfect!

Hi! If you envisage this as a movie, do you have any cast ideas!? I know I spoke to you before and said is it set in England, as that where I see it; wondering what other readers think about where it’s set?

Ohhh we have had great fun coming up with cast ideas! Some are pretty solid and even had a part in helping mold the characters—it was really helpful envisioning someone who exists to bring action alive in my mind as I wrote. I didn’t want to draw upon people in my orbit too heavily so that was a great exercise. Graham is most closely physically meant to be a mirror of a certain well known actor, and Alister is a blend of the mannerisms of another well known actor combined with the physical descriptions of a few others. The other main characters, Elinora, Lina, Jamie, and Tillie also have their imaginary counterparts that we came up with (me being me and my son and daughter, we had fun!). We joke our film budget would be in the billions if we had our way. But I don’t want to share who as I don’t want to sway what people envision in their own minds!

As for setting, the story takes place in a fictitious parallel world, Eldmoor. All places and place names are fictitious as I wanted to take it out of our own experience and be able to build a world how I would like it to be. (As a semi related aside, I would have made the story take place within a full on utopia for that reason, but in the name of a dramatic story and also one with some meat so it has meaning, I wanted/needed to put some elements of discord and conflict that I could work with, and that is the existence of greed, and related to that, the seizure of control of education and the reserving of it for the most elite).

But I chose to do this in order to throw the story squarely into a fantasy realm. I know it may be a thorn in the side for a few readers to not know fully where it was set, but that was part of my goal—to make it a place that was similar yet different, the feeling you can get when traveling to a foreign place.

That said, I say to people who are curious and do want context, that it is vaguely English-ish-ish m, as I spent 19 days in the English countryside with my mom (who was on a genealogy quest), grandma and husband many many years ago. So I did naturally take a little from memories of that. But also it is very firmly rooted in the landscape of my area of the world too, NE Ohio (which has similarities to that part of the world in ways, namely the frequent low clouds and grey skies and beautiful greenery) even more so. And the rivers and forests I hiked along and among almost daily while writing is what you’re probably also feeling. But in the end, Eldmoor is it’s own place, in its own world.

To be continued…