Julia Strong asked Scott Hawkins:

how do you come up with the characters names?

Scott Hawkins Hi Julia,

For the librarians, it started out in alphabetical order. At one point there was (IIRC) an Allison and a Bob, but they got dropped for whatever reason. Carolyn and David obviously made the final cut. If memory serves, at one point in the very early stages I lost track of the little list I was using to keep track of names, so I skipped ahead to Jennifer, (Kevin, IIRC-- he got dropped), Lisa, Michael. I also wanted a whitebread suburban vibe for this one, so I mmmostly stuck to names I could remember from my own grade school days.

As far as the made-up names -- Ablakha, Mithraganhi, Nobununga -- I just liked the sound of them. I think I might have tweaked Ablakha's name to match up better with the actual historical guy Abla Khan, but I don't remember what it used to be.

I named Dresden and Nagasaki after the hugely fatal WWII bombings, obviously. Dresden's animal language name "Thorn of Dawn" was just something I thought sounded cool.

Last names were mostly random, but Steve's last name (Hodgson) is a nod to the writer William Hope Hodgson, who wrote a book called The Night Land that I liked a lot. That bit about "the black pyramid at the end of time" is a reference to Hodgson's book, as is the word "monstruwaken." I think there might have been a couple of others.

In the one I'm working on now I've spent more time on baby name sites. It kills time when I'm having lunch.

Best,

Scott

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