Yesterday, I received an email that actually made me throw my head back and laugh with glee! (Thanks, Kelly!) Someone finally let me know that they got the names in Eternal Nights. At the time I wrote it, I wondered how many people would pick up on the fact that a lot of the secondary characters are named after professional baseball players, but after two months and no one saying a thing about that, I figured no one was appreciating the joke. Well, at least no one was letting me know that they'd seen the joke and humor is more fun shared.
It gets tough for me to come up with names for the "throwaway" characters. That's what I call the ones that are only on stage briefly. Maybe they don't even make a physical appearance, but are merely mentioned. Sure, I could go to one of the surname sites on the internet and search through there until I find one, but I have dial up and that would take valuable time for a character that's passing through so fast, it's hardly worth the hassle.
I was writing EN while the 2005 baseball playoffs were happening. (Actually, I was writing it before and after that too, but I needed most of the names while the games were going on.) I figured, hey, I've got hundreds of names just on the 8 teams in the playoffs and I don't have to quit writing longer than it takes to look up and see the team lineup. :-) If you know who was in the playoffs last year, and if you make note of the names of the smugglers mentioned, you'll know which teams I was not rooting for last year.
Some of the jokes I slip in my books are so narrow in scope, that most people won't understand them. (ie. PK in The Power of Two or the Crimson Jim in Through a Crimson Veil) But it's so much fun for me to hear someone say, I got it!
