I have been reading my first Sinead O’Hart middle grade novel
This is a fast paced fantasy adventure story
That will make you question everything you know about time
With family and friendship at it’s heart
It is a fast paced tale filled with twists and turns
Peril and intrigue
I immediately loved Mara
The young protagonist
Who has lived her whole life in a shabby van
With her dad, Gabriel
She has never been to school
She does not have a phone
She moves from place to place
With no family or friends
Or life of her own
Her father’s mysterious job
Keeps them constantly on the run
And Mara has never thought to question it
Until she discovers that her father is
The Time Tider
He is responsible for harvesting lost time
To stop it from forming dangerous warps
Mara does not understand what this means
For her or her dad
For anyone
And before she has time to ask any questions
Her dad is kidnapped
And it is up to Mara to find him
The very fabric of time and space are at stake!
This is a brilliant book
It has really made me want to learn more
About the science that inspires fantasy and science fiction stories
It has made me want to read around the subject of time
To explore space-time
Electromagnetism and black holes
I read Mara’s story myself
But I just know that my 12 year old son will absolutely adore this tale of
Tiders, Clockwatchers, Timekeepers, Warps, the Stitch
Blending Time, Timelocks, Time Dumps and
Snippets from The Tide Tider’s Handbook
He will be intrigued by the idea of harvesting time
I enjoyed all of that but for me
This book was about the people
Their connections to one another
Their strengths and vulnerabilities
I loved Mara and Jan
I loved the twists and turns in their story
I loved their courage and determination to do the right thing
This story has had me on the edge of my seat
Ignoring my own children
Having to read on and on and on
It is a fantastic read
And for me it has taught me something important
To live the time that I have and not chase the time I have lost
This is a book that gets inside your head
And leaves you with more questions than answers
I think I will read it again
And I am excited to talk to my children about it
Once they have journeyed through time and space
With Mara, Gabriel and Jan
With The Time Tider
As part of the Blog Tour for her book
Sinead O’Hart has written some wonderful guest posts
The one I have to share with you now
Is all about naming characters
And the importance of names
Which anyone who knows me
Or who has read my blog for any length of time
Will know is something very important to me
I LOVE names with meanings
All my children’s names have special meanings
That link to family and to one another
That link to earth, sea and sky
I have loved reading Sinead’s writing about names
And I hope that you will too
What’s in a Name?
One of my favourite aspects of being an author is coming up with characters. For me, that’s where a story begins – with the people who carry it, who live it, and who go on the adventure I’m dreaming up. Usually, for a story to take root in my head, I need an opening sentence, and at least one character. Sometimes, the characters and the story they belong in come separately, but sometimes they come at the same time, like a two-for-one delivery. (This is why, of course, it’s so important to take notes, and to keep your ideas safe, for you never know when the perfect story for that six-legged green squishy froth-monster you keep dreaming about will turn up.)
For my first book, The Eye of the North, the character of Emmeline and her story came all at once – she began whispering her tale into my ear one day, and I basically listened to her until she was finished telling it, and by then I had the first draft of a book. For my second book, The Star-Spun Web, my characters of Tess and Violet arrived into a completely different story, and it took a while to entice them into the world they were supposed to be in (but they were happy, once they arrived). My third book, Skyborn, was a little different, as the protagonist was a boy I’d met before, and one I loved very dearly (and if you’ve read The Eye of the North, then you’ve met him too), but his story was built around him, and in particular, at least for me – around his name. This is a boy who has many names, and that’s a significant part of his character.
And then we have the characters in my fourth book, The Time Tider, who have lived in my head for such a long time that I feel like I should set a place for them at the dinner table. These characters arrived in my head long before the events in their book did, though I have known, in essence, what they would do and the things they were capable of for a very long time. One of the most interesting aspects of the characters in The Time Tider is their names – and sometimes, a character’s name can tell you so much about them. Thinking about character names, as a reader or a viewer of a story, can be like uncovering a secret, hidden layer of meaning, or like discovering an ‘easter egg’, and authors often put a lot of time and effort into choosing names. Sometimes, as happens for me, characters and their names come simultaneously, and straight away you know that a character has simply got to have a particular name (usually, my main characters will arrive like this in my head), but it can be fun to think of names to suit your secondary characters. I often like to reference friends and family in my character names, mostly because it brings a smile to my face when I’m struggling through edit after edit, but also because it brings joy to my loved ones to see a little nod, or an in-joke, that perhaps only they will understand.
Occasionally, character names will give a reader a clue, or an insight, into the character themselves, and what they might do, or what their real motivations are. In my book The Star-Spun Web I made use of this when naming my antagonist, the wealthy man who, for reasons of his own, wants to take the main character (Tess de Sousa, and her pet tarantula, who rejoices in the name ‘Violet Agatha Christabel de Sousa’) out of the home they’ve lived in all their lives and into his house, where he can make use of Tess’s abilities to travel between her own reality and other realities. His name is Norton F. Cleat, and when I was coming up with the kind of person I wanted him to be, his name suggested itself naturally. A ‘cleat’ is an object that you can tie things to – so, the metal bollards at quaysides where boats are tied up can be called a cleat. It’s also used to mean the spikes on the bottom of certain types of sports shoes, which are designed to keep the wearer ‘stuck’, or steady. So, for me, ‘Cleat’ was the perfect name for a man who didn’t want to be stuck, or steady – who wanted to travel far beyond his own place and time, but who found himself frustrated and kept from his ambition, against his will.
Another thing I like to do when coming up with character names is experiment with different languages, and choose names with meanings which might not be immediately evident to an English-speaking reader. An example of this is the character of Nanette van Hemel in my third book, Skyborn. Nanette has taken a stage name – her real name is far more ordinary – but ‘van Hemel’ comes from the Dutch words meaning ‘from the heavens’ or ‘from the sky’. As Nanette is a circus aerialist, used to performing on the trapeze and the high wire, her stage name couldn’t be more appropriate. I did this with the main characters in my new book, The Time Tider, too. Their family name, Denbor, comes from the word ‘denbora’, which is a word for ‘time’ in the Basque language. Mara, my protagonist, was originally named ‘Maraika’, because ‘aika’ is a word for ‘time’ in Finnish, and I constructed my character name around that. Her name was shortened to ‘Mara’, but as this name is an Irish-language word for ‘the sea’, which gives her a link to tides, I was happy to make that change.
So, next time you’re reading a book and a character name strikes you as strange, or interesting, why not do a bit of research into it? Chances are you’ll find the author has put a lot of thought into it, and would be delighted to think of a reader uncovering the secrets, and discovering what truly is in a name – the heart of a character, clues to their actions, and perhaps a joke or a pun to make you smile. And if you’re writing your own stories, remember these tricks, and have fun coming up with your own character names.
Do check out the rest of the tour for more thoughts on
The Time Tider
And more guest posts from Sinead
We have loved being part of this tour
Thank you so much Little Tiger
