A warm welcome to author G.B Gordon joining us today to talk about new release “Operation Green Card”, part of Riptide’s Bluewater Bay series.

What’s in a name?

Hello and thank you to our hosts for letting us play on their site.

Naming things has power, and while I try not to spend undue time on naming my characters, I do want names for them that fit. I’m talking cultural background, thinking about what names their parents would have chosen (Which means thinking about who the parents are/were. Which, in turn, helps rounding out the character. Which is a whole deep rabbithole on its own.), what names were popular when the heroes were born, that sort of thing. (And, yes, there have been names in novels with meaning and/or symbolism for a character.)

Jason Cooley in Operation Green Card was pretty straight-forward. Anglo-Irish background, parents would have gone for a strong male name. End of story.

Then I thought about Arkady and fell down the endless rabbit hole that is Russian naming conventions. Whoa!

Arkady’s last name, Izmaylov, was a given, of course, because he’s Natalya’s brother.

His first name is a nod to one of my favorite book characters. (Arkady Renko anyone?)

But I also needed a patronym, because apparently these are used possibly more than last names in Russia. So I decided his dad was Nikolay, which makes our hero Arkady Nikolayevich.

In Russia he would be Izmaylov Arkady Nikolayevich to the government, Arkady Nikolayevich to strangers,

Nikolayevich (or possibly Nikolaich) to his buddies,

Arkasha to his close friends and family,

and Arkashka to his mom when he was a baby (which his sister then turned into Kashka in the way that siblings have of making up names for each other).

Just a bit confusing to our Western brains, eh? I hope I’m not boring y’all to tears. This sort of thing is like crack for a linguist. But I’ll shut up now, before this gets indeed too long. Just know that I had a blast thinking about what the Russians in the novel would call each other at different times, and what that revealed about their relationships.

If anyone is interested in pursuing this further, tvtropes.org has a fascinating article on the topic.

 

Thanks for dropping by everyone. Feel free to comment or ask questions.

(And don’t forget to leave your email addy for the raffle.)

 

About Operation Green Card

Arkady Izmaylov is a family man. He’s also gay. In Russia. His sister Natalya has been telling him to get out for years, but it’s only after an attack in the street that he finally concedes and says yes to her desperate plan of him marrying a stranger for a green card.

Jason Cooley was taught from birth that he’s no good to anyone. Then the military taught him he was good enough to save other lives, but that purpose got amputated along with his leg. He’s now working security at Wolf’s Landing and sending monthly checks to his ex for their daughter’s education. When Natalya asks him to marry her brother, Jason knows right away he’ll do it more for the mission than the money she’s offering. But when he actually meets Arkady, his mission turns complicated.

Jason quickly discovers he’s not as straight as he thought. He’s also the man of Arkady’s dreams. Arkady must convince Jason that he’s worth loving, and that Arkady won’t disappear from his life like everyone else. Because Arkady has always wanted a family of his own, and he’s not letting go of this one.

Available now from Riptide Publishing!

Amazon

About Bluewater Bay

Welcome to Bluewater Bay! This quiet little logging town on Washington state’s Olympic Peninsula has been stagnating for decades, on the verge of ghost town status. Until a television crew moves in to film Wolf’s Landing, a soon-to-be cult hit based on the wildly successful shifter novels penned by local author Hunter Easton.

Wolf’s Landing’s success spawns everything from merchandise to movie talks, and Bluewater Bay explodes into a mecca for fans and tourists alike. The locals still aren’t quite sure what to make of all this—the town is rejuvenated, but at what cost? And the Hollywood-based production crew is out of their element in this small, mossy seaside locale. Needless to say, sparks fly.

This collaborative story world is brought to you by eleven award-winning, best-selling LGBTQ romance authors: L.A. Witt, L.B. Gregg, Z.A. Maxfield,  Heidi Belleau, Rachel Haimowitz, Anne Tenino, Amy Lane, SE Jakes, G.B. Gordon, Jaime Samms and Ally Blue. Each contemporary novel stands alone, but all are built around the town and the people of Bluewater Bay and the Wolf’s Landing media empire.

Check it out at Riptide Publishing!

 

About GB Gordon

G.B.Gordon worked as a packer, landscaper, waiter, and coach before going back to school to major in linguistics and, at 35, switch to less backbreaking monetary pursuits like translating, editing, and writing.

Having lived in various parts of the world, Gordon is now happily ensconced in suburban Ontario with the best of all husbands.

Connect with Gordon:

• Website and blog: gordon.kontext.ca
• Twitter: @gb_gordon
• Goodreads: goodreads.com/gbgordon

 

To celebrate the release of Operation Green Card, one lucky winner will receive a $10 Riptide credit! Leave a comment with your contact info to enter the contest. Entries close at midnight, Eastern time, on December 16, 2017. Contest is NOT restricted to U.S. entries. Thanks for following the tour, and don’t forget to leave your contact info!