Questions nobody asked me

I've done a lot of author interviews, and answered many questions. But, just because I can, here are a couple of questions I've seen asked in author interviews, or on "ask the author" threads, but don't remember being asked myself, and the answers I'd have given to them if someone had asked me:

1. How do you come up with your character names, and the titles for your books?

"When it comes to titles, some of my titles just come to me, others come after some serious thinking time. But all have one thing in common: they reference either an important event from the story, the main character, or both. For example, ‘Quest For The Purple Pumpkin’ refers to the fact that Polly goes on a quest to find the purple pumpkin, and ‘Vinnie The Vegetarian Zombie’ is a book about a vegetarian turned zombie named Vinnie.

When it comes to character names, mostly I pick them for their meanings, and search baby name sites for names that mean things that fit the type of characters, or look up words in other languages that have the meaning I'm looking for (that's how I got the name for Neige from 'Cubby And The Beanstalk'). Other times I pick them because they're the name of the pet I'm basing my story on (like with Kero from the 'Kero's World' series). They also sometimes pick themselves, and I only change them if they don’t feel right to me, or if my association with the name, or the meaning of the name, is all wrong for how I view the character. There have also been a few names I got by either randomly putting together syllables associated with names for those races in popular fiction (which is how I got the names for Arael and Derwyn from ‘Quest For The Purple Pumpkin’) or using the name generating option on the Hero Lab program for the Pathfinder roleplaying system, when I use it to help along my character creation process (which is how I got the names for Ardul and Rith from 'Snowball The Oddball Kobold'). However I pick the name though, I look for one I like, one that feels right for the character, and one that's not too difficult to pronounce."

2. If you could visit - or live in - any fantasy world, which one would you pick? Why?

"Narnia, because then I could be surrounded by talking animals, and meet Aslan the lion."

3. If you could have lunch with a fictional character, who would you pick? Why?

"I'd like to pick two: Aslan and Luna Lovegood. Aslan from the Narnia books, because he's a talking lion, and also very wise, so would quite likely have some interesting things to say. Luna Lovegood from the Harry Potter books, because I like her unique way of looking at the world, and I think she would make lunch fun and entertaining."
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Published on October 13, 2014 00:34
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Victoria Zigler
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