Heeeeey there, I'm the dude who asked if they could translate your novel, "The God Eaters" :0 Not sure whether you'd be okay with a PM (or however they're called? personal message? private message?), so I'll start out the convo here if that's okay? If you're up for the discussion we can always switch to another system. The point of this post: I have a number of questions about the novel, and in particular your choice of names for cities, characters, etc etc. Would you be willing to answer them? No hurry. (and thank you again aaaaaah the writing is so delicious)
so it turns out if you @ me in the thread title i don't get a notification. i did not know that! sorry about the delay. i'm happy to answer the questions in public here, or we can take it to PM if you'd rather, up to you. fire away!
Alright! Thank you so much, and no problem about the delay :D (also haha, i think it would've been impossible for you to get the message anyway since i used your tumblr name instead of the one you use here -- my bad) So hmmm, I'll start off with a few and add on in subsequent posts, because I probably won't remember everything I want to ask right away anyway :P First -- when it comes to naming cities, places and characters, was there a particular reason for the names you chose? Some of them are clear enough, like the Burn/Burn River/Churchrock (based on that other rock formation, found a reference to it on your blog?), but for names like Kieran Trevarde or Ashley Trine, Hasher Street, Maley (taking examples from the prologue for place specifics here) I can't do anything but make vague guesses. Any info would be helpful! Second -- is Iavaian based on an existing language, or did you invent it entirely, or did you only create the few words/phrases you needed for your story without necessarily basing them on a coherent grammatical system? Third -- mostly out of curiosity, what are your literary influences?
oh gosh, i completely forgot, i'm so sorry. orz ok so one of the inspirations for the dynamic between the commonwealth and iavaiah was the british occupation of india, and the somewhat irish-sounding names of the main characters are kind of a private nod to kimball o'hara, the protagonist of kipling's 'kim'. i tried to give loosely english-sounding names to things the commonwealth named; hasher street etc. are most likely named after military officers or financial figures. iavaian is loosely based on navajo, but with a japanase grammatical structure. i wrote myself a tiny dictionary. :D influences... i already mentioned kipling... rather than spend all day trying to answer this one, i'm just going to say i've always been drawn to writers who prize storytelling and worldbuilding over style. writers whose intent is to write a good story as effectively as possible, not to be 'original' or write 'beautiful prose' or any of that litfic nonsense. glen cook, steven brust, tim powers, etc. terry pratchett has been a huge influence on me, but i don't think i'd started really putting those lessons into practice when i wrote 'god eaters'. maybe in characterization, somewhat.
Aaaaah this is awesome, thank you very much :D No more questions for now, I'll @ you on the next post with new ones.
