A Goodreads user asked Kendare Blake:

Dear Kendare, I was wondering about how you chose the names of the events/characters/places you write about. Do you invent them from the top of your heard, or do you get inspired by real events/people/places? I'm asking you this question because one of my friends just told me about the Beltane Fire Festival in Edinburgh and I couldn't help but think of the Beltane ceremony in Three Dark Crowns.

Kendare Blake Hi Clothilde! I always say that the good characters, the nice, well-behaved, easy-to-work-with characters, show up with names. How polite of them! The stand-outs even show up with voices! Ah, they make my life easy.

Same goes for places, or events. I'll think of a thing, a ritual maybe, and the name for it will just pop into my head. Ta-da! And I'll say, wonderful, that's your name, the Quickening (for example) foreverafter.

And then there are events and characters who have real life counterparts, like Beltane, a pagan holiday celebrated across the globe, and say, characters like the Greek Goddess Athena who I featured in my Goddess War trilogy. So I take some of their real-life attributes and infuse them with my own. Though I've never been to the Edinburgh Beltane Fire Festival (actually had never heard of it until now!) but now it's on my bucket list :)

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