Sand Down A Rathole

I started writing a book a while ago. I had some peculiar views and the characters in the book are an expression of them. It's a suspense novel, full of terrorists and counter-terrorists, life on the fringe of the modern world. Then, as most good stories go, I met a girl. My edgy fringe views are getting pretty blurry, and my characters are having a harder time justifying their actions. I read the more recently written stuff, and it is nowhere near the quality of the first chapter.

On the other hand, I've been working on an archive form of my serial project. It's the thing that new readers are linked to in the intro to Arvil Bren's Journal. It's just all the journal entries put in proper order, and I'm working on illustrating it. Anyway, in the course of putting it together I was reading some bits and pieces. I am really pleased with my readers who stuck with me at the start, because I personally think the early episodes weren't that good, especially when I compare them to what I am putting out now. Unlike my suspense novel, my heroic fantasy skills seem to be improving with my shifting viewpoint.

A heroic fantasy view is a lot more fun to live with than an edgy fringe of society view. Thank you Laurie.

Now I have a dilemma. I'm feeling more and more like working on this novel is pouring sand down a rathole, but I have to work on something. The ads in AB's journal are not going to make me a living unless there's a sudden influx of about a hundred thousand readers. So here's the confession of a challenged author: I'm terrible with names, character names and place names. Suspense novel, no problem; Los Angeles, Honolulu, Chicago... and for characters, truth be told, I just open the phone book. I want to write a fantasy novel. Maybe not the next Lord of the Rings, but I think I can do as well or better than a lot of the stuff I see down at B&N. I have a good plot...so help me out here. I need good usable names for heroes and heroines, kings and dukes, cities and villages. All I can offer is a place in the acknowledgements of an as yet unwritten book, and not even the first place there...that's already taken. Like I said, every good story really is about a girl.