So my wife is seven months pregnant with our second baby. We have this brilliant name picked out for a girl but for some reason are coming up totally dry on a boy name. Actually, we can both think up names we like, we just can’t agree on one. It sucks. I don’t have a religious drop of blood in my body, but for some reason I love Old Testament names. Like Abraham. Or Solomon. My wife thinks they’re ridiculous – it sometimes takes me a while to convince her I’m not joking. I once went with Ezekiel. Okay, that may have been a stretch. But maybe not. Ezekiel. Just watch, it’ll be on the Top 10 Names list by 2020. She likes solid traditional names like John or Paul. Those are fine, honorable names, but they’re not for me.
It got me thinking about how we name characters. The two main characters in Gypsy Knights are Duri and Dill. Durriken Brishen and Dilia Rosa Canela del Cielo. Rhett and I have been living Gypsy Knights now for seven years and I’m sure this is lame and cliché and whatever, but honestly they seem like real people to us. Supposedly, Durriken means “fortune telling” and Brishen means “born during a rainstorm”. It just clicked for both of us right away.
I wish it could be like that for naming a baby – that something would just ring true from the moment it rolls off your tongue. Well, we’ve got two more months, maybe something will. It’s a super tough process – you feel like you’re determining the trajectory of someone’s entire life. Like our 2-year-old daughter’s name is Vita – “life” in Italian – and you’ve never met someone more vivacious. You just wonder whether people in some way embody their names.
Then there’s our villain: Radu Pinch. His name was originally Wurt Bald, which was a (very) thinly disguised play on the name of our longtime friend Burt Wald. Burt is a cool guy and a lot of fun to be around. He used to do this one thing that bugged my brothers when they were little – he would pick them up by their ears. Not really. He would cup their ears with his hands and then they would grab his wrists and he’d lift their feet off the ground a few inches. But I think it still hurt a little or maybe was just embarrassing. Putting that aside, Burt is a great guy who would do anything for you and could always make you laugh no matter what and I really miss him. Anyway, we were feeling mischievous when we started writing and we named our villain
Wurt Bald, after Burt. But then we felt bad that maybe Burt wouldn’t think it was funny. We didn’t want that to happen, so we started fishing around for something else. Rhett had a college buddy from Eastern Europe named Radu. We thought it was a super badass name and knew we had it right away. And Pinch just fell into place.
It’s a tremendous responsibility, naming someone. Day Six must have been exhausting for Adam, naming all the animals. If I could just come up with a name for a son… We’ve combed through the family tree, scoured the bookshelf, and browsed a preposterous number of baby naming websites. Nothing. I’m embarrassed.
Wait a second. I’ve got it.
Rumplestiltskin.
Fourteen-year-old Durriken Brishen has lost his parents, his grandfather, and though he doesn't know it, his Gypsy culture's dangerous gift.
Taken in and raised on the rails by the first woman to pilot a freight train, Durriken has one remaining connection to his Romani roots: a small wooden box that hangs from the hammer loop of his overalls.
The last gift he received from his grandfather, the box contains the world's first chess set. But a piece is missing: the Red Queen. According to Durriken’s family lore, the complete set awakens the power of Tărie, a mercurial gift that confers unique abilities on each new Master.
When a suspicious fire erupts in the Chicago rail yard, Durriken's escape produces an uneasy alliance, though not without its silver lining. Dilia is a few inches taller, several degrees cleverer, and oh yes – very pretty. While Durriken is uneasy allying with a girl whose parents were convicted of sedition, there's no doubt she is a powerful partner. And while it's not immediately clear to either, her own Guatemalan culture and family history are deeply entwined with the ancient Romani mystery.
Jumping box cars, escaping riverboats, deciphering clues, crossing swords with the brilliant madman Radu Pinch – with great American cities as its backdrop – Gypsy Knights is the page-turning saga of Durriken Brishen and his quest to rediscover his past.
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Two Brothers Metz Bio:
The Two Brothers Metz are happily settled in the rolling valleys of Western Pennsylvania – where they are hard at work on the second installment of The Gypsy Knights Saga.
Twitter:@twobrothersmetz
Email: twobrothersmetz@gmail.com
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