One Year Later...

Mentish Retreat November 2012

It's hard to believe it's been a year since we launched Turbo Monkey Tales. So much has happened since our first blog post! In honor of our anniversary we thought we'd all take stock and offer our own personal Year in Review.
So, without further ado, here's what the Turbo Monkeys have been up to for the last twelve months!

Hazel Mitchell

• New books include: 1,2,3 BY THE SEA from Kane Miller, ONE WORD PEARL from Charlesbridge and DOUBLE CROSSED AT CACTUS FLATS from ABDO. 
• Completed illustrations for HIGHLIGHTS MAGAZINE and educational books. 
• Spoke at SCBWI conferences in Paris and New England.
• Signed with a school booking agent http://authorvisits.com
• Visited several book festivals (including Bologna Children's Book Fair, The London Book Fair and ALA Chicago), book stores and schools!
• Now working on a new book with Charlesbridge due in Fall 2014!

Amy Allgeyer Cook

It’s been a pretty exciting year for me. I (finally) finished the first draft of my young adult novel, Water for Starfish, during NaNoWriMo, then spent the next six months in revisions. 

On May 14th, I sent out my first wave of agent queries. Over the next two months, I received full requests, form rejections, more full requests, rejections on fulls, more full requests and … more rejections. Then, on July 15th, came an offer. YAY! Big squees! I let the other agents who had open queries or full manuscripts know that there was an offer on the table. And I gave them two weeks to finish reading and get back to me. Two weeks later, I had three offers of representation from three absolutely freaking amazing agents, every one of whom would have been stellar to work with. Unfortunately, I had to pick JUST ONE! 

After a very thoughtful weekend spent in Reno with some very dear writer friends, I decided to go with Danielle Chiotti of Upstart Crow Literary. I’m so excited to be a part of the Upstart Crow team and to be working with Danielle, especially!

Sarah McGuire

Last year, our blog's first day was also the first day of preservice in my school district. That seems fitting, since it was also the first year that I taught Creative Writing, which was truly an adventure.

Since then, I...

• Finished the Highlights workshop with Patti Gauch in October, which helped my jump into revisions on VALIANT
• Started submitting VALIANT on February 14
• Spent spring break angsting about VALIANT while vacationing at the oh-so-fabulous When Words Count retreat. (Yay for sweepstakes!)
• Signed with Tracey Adams of Adams Literary in April (I'm still happy dancing!)
• Finished school year and VALIANT revisions the way most teachers do– sleep deprived and somewhat incoherent
• Drove cross-country to help a friend move to Washington state. I even stopped in Reno on the way back to meet with a few of Monkey tribe! VALIANT has traveled as well- venturing out into the world as it looks for a home.

This week, it begins again. During preservice, I'll be preparing for Algebra II, College Algebra Trig, and of course, Creative Writing. 

Craig Lew

In this year of the Turbo Monkey: 

1) My movie ROCK JOCKS released in Theaters in June - Available on iTunes and Amazon http://www.rockjocksthemovie.com

2) My Augmented Reality App BPZapp became available in the iTunes App Store and Google Play 

3) My Augmented Reality graphic novel, THE GOTHS: THE HUNTRESS (available on Amazon) was a finalist in the Indie Excellence Book Awards.

4) My latest acquisition, SMELVIN AND GOULASH BOY (written by Amy Allgeyer Cook, Edited by Lorin Oberweger, illustrated by Hazel Mitchell) will release in print, iBook and enhanced with Augmented Reality in Fall 2013.

5) Spoke at the Boise Cutters and Idaho Media Professionals Film Groups

6) I adopted Smittens, the kitten with the marshmallow mittens. 

7) Raced in the Idaho State Criterium Cycling Championships and lived

8) Met many new people and made some amazing friends.

I have two pending deals which could be huge...but I cannot talk about them yet.

Julie Dillard

Year highlights:

I feel really fortunate to have had the opportunity to attend TWO inspiring conferences this year--the Ventana Sierra Advanced Writers Workshop and SCBWI's Summer Conference in Los Angeles. I'm attacking my stories with fresher enthusiasm because of the focused time those experiences provided to hone in on craft and process. I am in a rewarding new teaching position, which means I have to draw on all the thoughtful advice I get from fellow writers to make progress in the limited time I have. One method I've adopted is getting up at 5am to sneak in an hour of writing before rushing off to work. The best side effect is having the story simmer in my head all day long! The very best part of this year has been, through conferences and great meet-ups with writer friends, abundant reminders of how very kind, funny, and compassionate--even heroic--people who write for children can be. Bring on the new year!

Kristen Crowley Held

Just a couple of days after our first blog post in 2012 I participated in the awesome online children’s writers conference WriteOnCon. This year’s conference starts tomorrow and, trust me, you won’t want to miss it! I also found inspiration at several in person SCBWI conferences and events where I reconnected with old friends and discovered new ones. By far my favorite part of this past year was attending the book launches of several writerly friends and crit buddies. I also had the pleasure of seeing my name in the acknowledgements of a real live book for the first time (if you haven’t read Katherine Longshore's TARNISH, go buy a copy right now, I’ll wait!). After much back and forthing, I broke up with my MG fantasy novel once and for all (or at least until I can figure out how to make it the wondrously magical thing I want it to be). With the help of a two week fast draft class run by Candace Havens, I wrote a “discovery draft” of the YA mystery (BLURT) I started at our mentish reunion at the fabulous St. Mary’s Art and Retreat Center in Virginia City, and next month I’m off to the Writer's Police Academy to make sure my manuscript “won’t bleed red ink later.”  I’m excited about getting BLURT to the beautiful/shiny stage and will be hopping on the query roller coaster later this year. Wish me luck!

Ellen Jellison

For the past year, I’ve been working on a middle grade historical/fantasy novel set along the Danube River in 170 AD. Ancient Roman and Germanic mythology is woven throughout the story, at times in real life, then fading back into mythology. Getting it right has been a challenge. The book is called JUSTUS, although I call it my Never Ending Revision. I’m finally on the last chapters, so yippee!  Two conferences that I recently attended and can highly recommend are the Speakeasy Literary Society’s retreat at Fallen Leaf Lake, and Terri Farley’s Ridin’ Writer’s Workshop. Both were intimate in nature, yet very powerful. I left both with new friendships, new ideas, and a rejuvenated determination in finishing JUSTUS, no matter how long the journey! My favorite word is perseverance, one familiar to all writers and illustrators . . . hang in there and keep on truckin’!

Marilyn Hilton

This has been a wonderful year with the monkeys! Although I didn't lose the 10 pounds I'd hoped to, I read lots of fabulous middle-grade and young-adult novels that have entertained, inspired, amused, educated, and enlightened me. I also attended several writers conferences and retreats, including three SCBWI regional conferences with Kristen, the Speakeasy Literary Society Retreat in April with Ellen, and the SCBWI Summer Conference in LA with Julie and Craig. It was a treat to have that time with them and so many other inspiring writers of children's literature. In October, a YA manuscript I'd been working on won the First Page contest at the SCBWI San Francisco North & East Bay conference, and I've continued working on that manuscript, along with a few others. But most of my writing time and energy this year have been spent working on revisions of my debut middle-grade novel, FOUND THINGS, which will be published by Atheneum in summer 2014. (The photo is me with my wonderful editor, Namrata Tripathi.)

I can't imagine having taken this journey so far without the monkeys, and I'm so excited to see what the next year brings for us all!

FAST DRAFTING: Wrap-Up

by Kristen Crowley Held

I did it! I finished a rough draft of my story! Okay, I didn’t write the last line until last week, but I wouldn’t have gotten there without my two weeks of fast drafting. 

As you may recall, in the blog post I wrote on Day One of my fast drafting class I said my goal was: 

“to commit to a story and vomit it on the page fast enough that I don’t have time to talk myself out of writing it. It will not be perfect. It may be total crap. I may put it directly in the bottom of a trunk once I reach 280 pages. BUT I WILL WRITE 280 PAGES!!”

Here are my stats:

I had a little bit of trouble with committing to one story (I switched stories on Day 5), but I did manage to write 20 pages every day and had a couple of glorious days where I wrote even more. 

Total number of pages written = 293 (Courier 12pt, for those of you who are curious)

Word count = 61,402

What I’ll do differently next time:

Be a Plotser. It seems I’m neither a Plotter* nor a Pantser**, but somewhere in between. I initially tried to pants a brand new story but on Day 4 I realized I had too many questions and instead of writing scenes I was brainstorming plot. The story wasn’t solid enough in my head to get it down on paper yet. My muse totally balks at plotting out an entire story ahead of time, but I need it to be at least partially defined before I try to capture it on the page. 

Why Fast Drafting worked for me:

As I said, I like challenges! And this class gave me a specific goal with a finite timeframe. 

When I hit the wall with my pantser story, instead of flailing around in despair and deciding that there were fifty million other things I should be doing instead of writing, I had a challenge to focus on. Plus I was getting daily email updates from my classmates and I did NOT want to be the person who either didn’t post their page count or had to admit they’d only written 216 words for the day. Did I mention that Candy is hardcore? When she says you get your words done no matter what, she means it. 

I couldn’t figure out how to make forward progress on my pantser story but I had two or three other ideas that I’d been mulling over before the class started so I decided to write a one paragraph synopsis for each idea and see what happened. When I got to the third story idea, one that’s been in my back pocket for over a year, I wrote the synopsis and just kept writing. And writing. And 213 pages later it was the last day of class.

Admittedly, I was still nowhere near finished with my story. So I kept writing. Not at the same 20 pages a day pace, which I’ve found is nearly impossible to maintain for more than two weeks without a great deal of advance preparation (and possibly a nanny). But without that two week promise I certainly wouldn’t have a big fat stack of manuscript pages sitting on my desk ready for me to revise. 

Revisionland, here I come!

Why I encourage you to try Fast Drafting:

It’s a huge commitment of time and energy but it’s only two weeks! Two weeks to focus in on your story and figure out very quickly what’s working and what isn’t, instead of flailing around for months, maybe even years. 

I will definitely plan on fast drafting again, but for now I've got a novel to revise!

*Plotter: one who carefully plots her book ahead of time 

**Pantser: one who writes by the seat of her pants

FAST DRAFTING: Day One!

by Kristen Crowley Held

After reading Julie’s post last week I’m even more excited about the two week investment in my writing that I recently decided to make.

Some of my best adventures in life thus far have been the result of doing something most people thought was crazy.  

Ride my bike from San Francisco to Los Angeles? Sure, why not?

A couple of weeks ago I went in search of a writing adventure and found Candace Havens' Fast Draft Workshop. The objective of the class is to write twenty pages a day for fourteen days. Twenty pages! A day! For fourteen days!

According to the class rules THERE ARE NO EXCUSES IN FAST DRAFT! Unless you’re dead or in a coma, you must write your twenty pages.

Have I mentioned I like challenges?

Flying trapeze, anyone?

Today is DAY ONE.

This morning I’ll be rising before the sun and sending my Internal Editor on a two week vacation. I’ve prepped meals for my family, scheduled hours of entertainment for my kiddos, cleared my desk and set aside at least two and a half hours a day to write.

In order to keep myself accountable I’ll be posting my daily page tally as comments on this blog entry EVERY SINGLE DAY.

My goal is to commit to a story and vomit it on the page fast enough that I don’t have time to talk myself out of writing it. It will not be perfect. It may be total crap. I may put it directly in the bottom of a trunk once I reach 280 pages. BUT I WILL WRITE 280 PAGES!!

It’s only two weeks, right? 

Even if you’re not ready to commit to writing 280 pages in two weeks, or you’re in the middle of revisions or copyedits or whatever, I dare you to challenge yourself today. Pick a goal that seems crazy and, once you’ve decided there are no excuses for not meeting that goal, post it in the comments section to keep yourself accountable. I promise to cheer you on! 

After I finish my twenty pages, of course.

UPDATE: You can read my wrap-up post on my fast drafting experience here.

Monkey #1s: The One Thing You Wish You'd Known When You Were Just Starting Out

Amy:  I wish I’d worked harder at studying the craft when I first started (and not just spewed words onto a page.) You do learn by writing, but it’s a trial-and-error sort of learning.

Craig:  That YA should be in first person.

Ellen:  I wish rejection letters had not had such an impact on my early writing, and that I should persevere.

Hazel:  I wish I’d started earlier.

Julie:  Do it entirely for love of it, for the writing itself. That's the only thing (besides the friendships) that will keep you going.

Kristen:  There's no such thing as a day off when you're a writer.

Marilyn:  I wish I had known that writing would take lots of guts, determination, and manufactured confidence

Sarah:  (I heard it but I didn't believe it.) It's going to take a while. It's going to take time to be half as good as I'd like to be. It's going to take a while to become familiar with the industry. But more than that, it's okay if it takes that much time. Lots of good stuff happens along the way, if you have the courage and sense of adventure to stick it out.

Building a Fantasy World

by Sarah 

I'm mostly-kind-of-almost finished with VALIANT, a YA retelling of a The Brave Little Tailor. For the past year, I've been living in– and creating!– a fantasy world that I hope readers will want to enter. I want it to be so real, so vivid, that someone will feel homesick once the story's finished. 

I'm still learning this worldbuilding thing, but I did gather a few tools along the way. There are tons of websites with worksheets that help you expand your world's culture(s). (Google 'worldbuilding.') However, I found I needed the most help with naming and visualizing my world. So I'd to share what I used for: 

Character names

See Kristen's excellent post! (Or ask Craig. I wrote a few weeks before giving my MC a name– and it was finally Craig who suggested Saville.) 

Place Names

Wikipedia is your friend! It wasn't until I'd gotten through most of the story that I realized the river in VALIANT felt like the Krivija, a river I loved in Bosnia. But I also based the river on the Danube. So I looked up the Danube in Wikipedia. The article provided a ton of place names that I could adjust and use. I can't tell you how many times I've sifted through Wikipedia for place– or character– names. 

The process reminds me of looking through a thesaurus. You may not know what you're looking for, but you'll know it when you see it. 

Fantasy Language 

VALIANT needed a few words in the giants' language. I felt completely overwhelmed until I found Definitions. I'd type in a word like 'little' or 'traitor,' click 'Translations' on the right, and then see the word translated into about twenty different languages. (I LOVE this website!) Often, I'd find a word that sounded almost right. Then I'd play with sounds and syllables it was just what it should be. 

A word of caution: be sure to keep the sound or feel similar. You probably wouldn't want to claim that Hindi and German-sounding words come from the same language. 

Music

It isn't easy finding a playlist for a fantasy. But never fear! Use Pandora. For those of you who aren't familiar with the website, you can create a station by suggesting songs that you like and then rating songs that the website plays. It takes a little time, but it's worth it. And it has access to movie soundtracks, which was perfect. After a little tweaking I created a station of soundtracks and composers that matched the feel of VALIANT. (It's a combo of Lord of the Rings, Last of the Mohicans, Gladiator, Braveheart, etc...)

Rambling ahead:

May I add that while I don't daydream about Oprah mentioning my book, I DO fantasize about Peter Jackson making it into a film? Two reasons: 1) He'd film it in New Zealand, and I'd have to visit at least once to squeal over the sets, and 2) I want to hear what Howard Shore would do with the giants' songs. I don't know how they sound– just how they make the listeners feel. But I bet Shore could figure that out.... 

Annnnd... back to our regularly scheduled programing:

Faces
After a while, I needed faces for my main characters. I knew roughly what they looked like, but I wanted pictures. And I knew Lord Verras did NOT resemble any member of One Direction. I needed more than a Google Image search. So I went to London's National Gallery website and searched the paintings by century. It was like searching a crowd for a friend's face. 

I thought about sharing the portraits here, but I don't think they'd work. For me, the search was as much about the emotion in the portrait as the face itself. Still, I discovered such interesting things about my people! For instance, I knew one character was chubby but I didn't know he was swarthy until I saw his portrait. 

I know there are a million other resources out there. I'd love to hear from you: What have you used as you write fantasy? 

YA Girl: Episode 1

by Kristen Crowley Held

Greetings Monkey Tribe!

A non-writer asked me recently if my characters talk to me, which inspired me to create YA Girl: A Behind the Scenes Look at the Life of a YA Writer.

Today I give you Episode 1:

YA Girl Episode One
by: tenheld


So, um, anyone else have an MC who talks to them?

10 Writerly Things to Love by Kristen Crowley Held

In honor of Valentine's Day,
a list of ten things that make my writer's heart go pitty-pat:

1. Up by Jawbone

You can track your sleep, activity, food and drink with this wristband plus app, but what I love about it is that it wakes me with a gentle buzz so I can get up and at my computer at the crack of dawn (or before) without disturbing my husband or my easily awakened small children.

2. Monday Coffee: Birdcage Tumbler 

Okay, I actually use it for tea, but this mug rocks! Thermal insulated, shatterproof, it holds eighteen ounces, is microwave and top dishwasher safe and it has a lid. What's not to love?

  3. Harney & Sons English Breakfast Tea Sachets

These "silken sachets" are faster and easier to use than loose leaf tea so I can get my caffeine on and get to writing ASAP.

4. Silicone Keyboard Cover

Fun and functional! Liven up your laptop and protect your keyboard from spills and toddler goo. Need I say more?

Knit mitts by Pia Barile (not my sis).

5. Arm Warmers

For some reason my office is the coldest room in the house, so my loving sis knitted some fabulous arm warmers to help keep my fingers flying despite the chill. If there's no accommodating knitter in your life, get thee to Etsy (the mitts pictured to the left are available from Pia Barile's shop).

6. Scrivener

The tagline says it all, "Outline. Edit. Storyboard. Write." And you don't even have to be a Mac user anymore to take advantage of this fabulous software program. If you're both meticulous and fragmented, like me, you'll love Scrivener too.

 

7. The Synonym Finder by J.I. Rodale

This corpulent tome never fails to assuage my polydipsia for a superlative word. Use it to add some pulchritude to your magnum opus, or even an opuscule.

8. The JuJuBe GigaBe Laptop bag

I discovered JuJuBe back in my diaper bag days and while I don't miss the diapers I did miss my tough, thoughtfully designed bag. So imagine my joy when I discovered they now make laptop bags! There are a number of patterns to choose from, as well as black and brown earth leather versions. There's also a smaller version called the MicraBe. Trust me, you'll love these "super smart bags."

9. Laplander Lap Desk

This lovely lap desk has a large surface area, elastic straps to keep your pens, notebook, cord, etc. from slipping, and the pillow detaches so you can easily pack it for travel.

10. Dropbox

"Dropbox is a free service that lets you bring all your photos, docs, and videos anywhere. This means that any file you save to your Dropbox will automatically save to all your computers, phones and even the Dropbox website." Back up your writing files, share your manuscript with your critique group, or access your files from another device. And even if every electronic device you own dies, your files are safe!

There you have it! Ten things I'll be loving on Valentine's Day morning when I tackle my WIP yet again. How about you? What would you put on your list of writerly things to love?

Writer, Heal Thyself: First Aid for Creative Types from Julie Dillard

So many of life’s worthwhile adventures include RISK.  We might suffer scrapes and bruises on the journey, whether it’s climbing a mountain, falling in love, parenting, or choosing the life of a writer/artist… 

A Cautionary Tale about a Girl Who Stood on a Chair to Hang Art

While I haven’t scaled Kilimanjaro and I’m hopeless when it comes to matters of the heart (running for one's passport is apparently not "a healthy choice"), I do have experience with effective first-aid for kid ouches. I have ice packs shaped like frogs and bunnies, bandages of every size, ointments, sticky sweet pink, purple, and red concoctions, thermometers, and a slew of books about what to do with that seal cough or goose egg.

Surely we risk-taking creative types deserve a toolbox full of comforts and cures, too, but what to put in it? Ice packs in the shape of character arcs? Bottles of fantasy-inducing potions?

I got a referral to some creative specialists and asked what they would put in a first-aid kit for various writer injuries and ailments.  There were a number of references to the healing properties of whiskey and pale ale, of course. Heather Petty touted the magical properties of Swedish Fish candies (and having read her work, I do not doubt their powers).

Gummy Muse?

In the course of my research, Kristen Crowley Held shared her experience with a writer's "first aid kit made by her husband:

Dan once made me a writer's kit when I went off to a cabin in the woods to write by myself. He checked out a bunch of books on writing/books on the subject I was writing about from the library and included them in a box with some chocolate and a note that I keep in my wallet to this day.

Mustache + Glare= Impact

(Swoon, huh? I know I wasn't the only one who made a point of leaving THAT up on the screen for a horribly neglectful spouse to "happen upon." Cough.)

Presuming you are not married to Kristen’s winner of a husband either, we just might need to (sigh) stock our own writer/illustrator first aid kits.

Next time you face

·         waiting-induced rashes of the psyche,

·         “we just bought a book exactly like it” scalds

·         conflicting rejection vertigo (I love the plot, but not so much the  character/I love the character but not so much the plot),

·         sluggish plot movement (plotstipation), 

·         or the common cold of the writing soul—self doubt,

 see if one of these cures just might deserve a place in your “artist’s first aid kit”:

Therapies:

Editor/Mentor extraordinaire Harold Underdown shows how it's done

• Snack break (posting pictures of it on Facebook optional)
• Walk it off (Nature + Escape)
• Clean or organize (bonus points if you beautify your working space). Charlene Ellen swears by a broom and a yard full of leaves to brush off the mental cobwebs.
• Change  (Abandon your laptop for a giant sheet of butcher paper, etc.)
• Meditation (I've been wanting to do this forever for presence of mind and stress relief--anyone use meditation to good effect? I'd love to hear about it!) Om.

My Biggest Fan

Fill Your Habitat with Creativity-Inducing Things:

Craig Lew's Muse

Favorite pens/tools (Craig Lew vows nothing inspires like a fountain pen)

Pets (because they know how AWESOME you truly are) 

Writer’s notebook or a sketchbook (No censorship—just brainstorming. Let go of the pressure to produce and just play.)

Kristen Held told me of a friend who lights a scented candle whenever she writes, so now when the smell of cinnamon-infused wax wafts through the air, a Pavlovian response kicks in and the muse shows up. (I’m so adopting this. Where is that coconut cream pie candle?)

Nathalie Mvondo (Multiculturalism Rocks!)  agreed that the candle thing works, and she reminded me of the healing/helping nature of music. Work on a playlist or station for that project to get your groove on. Tried Pandora yet? I actually have a station called "emotional writing music." Yep. 

All these things remind me of the importance of a happy habitat for writing. What would help make your working space more inviting and productive?

Second Opinions:

When the writing or drawing life has you under the weather, get a second opinion. Phone a friend, set up a writing evening, enter a contest, or sign up for that conference you're on the fence about--artist friends are the ultimate first responders.  Take that risk of reaching out and branching out. It'll be good for you--and your work.

With a little collaboration, you, too, can feel, well--

star-powered

First Aid Manuals: As creative types, we're naturally drawn to books, right? 

Here are a few books you might take a look at for your first aid kit:

The Artist’s Way  by Julia Cameron (Thanks for the recommendation, Marilyn Hilton!)

Steal Like An Artist : 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative by Austin Kleon 

How Not to Write a Novel :200 Classic Mistakes and How to Avoid Them--a Misstep-by-Misstep Guide by Howard Mittelmark and Sandra Newman

What acts, rituals, items, or books have you found helpful for writer comfort and mental health?   I'm stocking up!

[Insert Perfect Name Here]: Character Naming Resources for Writers.

by Kristen Crowley Held

I am really, really, really good at obsessing over character names. So good, in fact, that I've assembled quite a collection of books and websites that I use to seek out the PERFECT name. The name has to sound right both out loud and inside my head, has to fit the character without being too obvious and, if I'm really on my game, should have an extra layer of meaning known only to me (and readers well versed in name origins).

Occasionally, if it's not my protagonist who remains nameless, I can get away with writing things like [insert perfect name here] but usually I spend hours/days/weeks searching through my favorite character naming resources before I can move on.

Since I'm big on hidden meanings, one of my favorite resources is a book called Baby Names Made Easy: The Complete Reverse Dictionary of Baby Names by Amanda Elizabeth Barden. 

"Baby Names Made Easy offers selections organized into categories of meaning, making it easier than ever to choose a name that is significant to you."

Some sample categories: Animals & Insects, Hardworking, Magic, and Protector. Have a character trait in mind? Pick a category and you'll find a list of associated names.

Does your character have siblings? The Baby Name Wizard by Laura Wattenberg includes potential names for sisters and brothers with each listing. The Baby Name Wizard also has an awesome website that lets you track the popularity of a name over time and figure out in which part of the country your name is most often used. For a small fee you can also sign up for the Baby Name Wizard Expert Edition which uses Flash tools like the Name MatchMaker to find a name based on "your unique tastes and style."

Writing a Fantasy? Check out The New Book of Magical Names by Phoenix McFarland.

 

Need a surname?

The Writer's Digest Character Naming Sourcebook by Sherrilyn Kenyon has names and surnames from more than 45 countries.

Some of my favorite online character naming resources include:

Nameberry.com which lists names by every conceivable category. Looking for a Hipster name? Or maybe an Old Lady name? They've got you covered.

ParentsConnect.com allows you to search for names by meaning. Enter a word and they'll provide a list of names.

Nymbler.com helps you find the perfect name by having you choose names you like, but that aren't quite right, and extrapolates from there.

            

Looking for a cool nickname? Check out:

http://www.moonzstuff.com/articles/nicknames.html

http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~pacumber/nick.htm

Or maybe you just want a randomly generated name?

If you use Scrivener you've got a name generator built right in. 

If not, here are a couple of online name generators to check out:

http://www.kleimo.com/random/name.cfm

http://www.behindthename.com/random/

That ought to keep you busy for a few hours/days/weeks!

And now that I've shown you some places to look for them, how do YOU choose the perfect name for your character?