I wish I could take sole credit for my hero’s name,
 Feltus Ovalton LeRoi, but in fact I stole it from my
 husband’s family. When he was born, his maternal and
 paternal grandparents were equally determined that
 he would be named Ovalton, after one of his father’s
 ancestors and Feltus after his mother’s father.
 Ovalton Feltus was his fate but fortunately for him
 and the no doubt unrelenting teasing he would have
 had to endure at school, his mother and father won
 the day and he was christened with the boring name
 of Marcus. For many years I carried the name around
 with me, adding the last name ‘LeRoi’ when I finally
 came to write the book. I thought how hard it would
 be for a ‘new kid’ in school and one who had a hard
 time making friends being both shy and unhappy, to
 also be saddled with a name which practically
 screamed “Beat me up! Shun me! Call me Smeltus!”.
 His name in itself conjured all kinds of
 possibilities, and in fact helped open the door to
 the adventures he has in the book.
The PoodleRats came about one evening during dinner
 when I was feeding my one-year old son. He was
 throwing mashed bananas and oatmeal around with
 gusto and underneath the table, lurking with open
 mouths, sat our three dogs. ‘They’re more like rats
 than dogs,” I remarked. And then I thought, wouldn’t
 it be fun if there were secret invisible portals
 under the table and gigantic rats used them to
 forage in our world. I like rats but alot of people
 don’t so I thought they could be hybrid dog rats, or
 perhaps poodle-like rats with fancy trimmed fur. No
 one is scared of poodles. Then they morphed into
 something far more unique and otherwordly. I gave
 them noble sounding names because they are noble
 creatures; Saldemere Og, RinMal, Fosden, Bostwick,
 Maurph and Mellewyn, and I gave them a prophecy, and
 an unstoppable foe. Their odd names served as a link
 of sorts to Feltus. In fact, RinMal says when they
 first meet, “Your name sounds like a PoodleRat
 name.”
The unstoppable foe- the Kehezzzalubbapipipi– came
 about because honestly I wanted to make kids laugh,
 even when this monster was devouring everything in
 its path and threatening the lives of the
 PoodleRats. I also wanted parents to have to read it
 out loud repeatedly to younger kids. I think
 sometimes parents have to be forced to be silly.
Dare Al Luce means ‘give to the light’ in Italian
 and what better name for an angelic being than that?
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