Echoes in a Hollow Space

There is no right or wrong answer here.

I'm just trying to get an idea of how a name reads to people. It's for a character in a fantasy novel. It would be helpful if you could not only tell me how you think it's pronounced, but where the emphasis goes. Example: Kukomo. KOOK-oh-mo, KU-ko-mo, Ku-KO-mo, Ku-ko-MOO. You get it.

This is the name I would like to know about: Ramannes.

I can offer you nothing in return but my sincere thanks and ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️.

Thank you.

Random quote of the day:

“Yesterday’s rose endures in its name, we hold empty names.”

—Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

 

 

Disclaimer:  The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

 

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

Random quote of the day:

 

“It is not what you are called, but what you answer to.”

—African proverb

 

 

Disclaimer:  The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

The heroine of my novel Venus in Transit has been named Marian St. Cloud for at least ten years, ever since I first started working on the beginning inkling ideas for the book. Now this movie comes along and I’m thinking the whole St. Cloud family of Dos Lunas might have to have their names changed. I’m not going to do that now, because that name is so entrenched in my consciousness, but I assume that everyone will assume that I stole it from the movie.

It looks like a fairly paint-by-the-numbers, dorky movie, too.

Of course, I still have to finish the read-through, the time with betas, the hardcore rewrite, then the marketing of this novel, so considerable time could elapse before even the possibility of a publisher or readers seeing it. Maybe ol’ Charlie will have faded from memory by then. Or maybe it will become a huge freaking hit, what with soulfully blue-eyed Zak Efron drawing in the sighing crowd. I don’t know.

Names and titles. They’re tricky business in the fiction game.

In other but related fictive news: Titles come to me out of the ether on a regular basis, often without a story attached. I keep a file just for those. Sometimes they’re so suggestive that I have to come up with a story to go with them. It becomes an obsession. Blood Geek was one of those. Ironically, sometimes the name that gets me to write the story becomes obsolete with the writing and has to be changed. Charged with Folly was like that. It became A Rain of Angels. Changing titles like that can be painful.

I’ve got another title that popped through the ether the other day. A drumbeat has started in the center of my body. Good stories begin in my brain, of course, but the ones which have to be written always eventually migrate to my core, to my second brain: the heart. I have no idea what this story is about, but it’s already migrated.

We’ll see what comes of that.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

(adapted from safewrite.)

What is your last name? Thompson
2. 4 letter word: toot
3. Vehicle: Testarossa
4. Neighborhood: The Beach
5. Boy Name: Timothy
6. Girl Name: Thaïs
7. Occupation: Taxidermist
8. Something you wear: teddy
9. Food: tart(e)
10. Found in a bathroom: terlet
11. Reason for Being Late: traffic
12. Something you shout: "Traitor!"
13. Animal: tiger
14. Body part: tongue
15. Word to describe yourself: thoughtexperiment
16. Foreign Country: Togo

This time I used PJ Thompson rather than my full name. Much more comfortingly obscure.





See what I mean>

ETA: Oddly enough, I wrote this poll last week and posted it before I heard of Robert Jordan's death. RIP, Mr. Jordan.


Yes, I did "borrow" a couple of answers from a famous satire.

[Poll #1056646]

Famous Satire.

[This post refers to the name of my non-defunct Livejournal blog.]

I've been unhappy with the old name of my journal for a long time now: A Bump On A Blog. Blech. It was one of those spur of the moment things you regret long after. But I couldn't think of what else I wanted to call it and was mostly too distracted to worry about it. I'm not sure the new name is any better. I wanted to avoid pretentious if I could, but I may have reduced the concept to absurdity. I'll have to let it settle and see, but it is something I like to remind myself of now and then when I need to bring myself back to center. It's sort of a breathing exercise for the mind.

Making the change this week was inspired by a poem that I love muchas by Marie Howe called "What the Living Do." She wrote it to her brother who had died of AIDS. It always brings me back to center when the day-to-day irritants get to be too much. It reminds me that each moment of life is important. Not just the rhapsodic moments when the prose flows like warm honey; not just the pulse-thrumming moments of love; not just the day you get the prize and the whole world seems to breathe a big, "Huzzah!" Every moment is luminous with possibility, even the ones that irritate and enrage, because they're all what the living do, all part of the pulse of life, the collective experience of a life. That for which the dead yearn and can't have.

My journal is rarely that high-falutin, but it's still good to have that reminder. And yes, I am mindful of the fact that there are people right now living lives of quiet desperation who would be hard pressed to find luminosity in any moment of their lives. But the possibility for change and transformation is there in every moment of every life—that I firmly believe.

Oh, and I'm keeping the pink-on-pink design. [Didn't] I love color. It also reminds me that I'm alive.

If you want to read the full text of Ms. Howe's poem, it's here with a couple of others from her book, What the Living Do:

http://www.cs.arizona.edu/~kece/Personal/Poems/howe.html

In the meantime, here's a highly excerpted version to show you what I mean:

What the Living Do

Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days, some utensil
probably fell down there.
And the Drano won't work but smells dangerous, and the crusty
dishes have piled up
waiting for the plumber I still haven't called. This is the everyday we
spoke of....
****
But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in
the window glass,
say, the window of the corner video store, and I'm gripped by a
cherishing so deep

for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I'm
speechless:
I am living, I remember you.