I know people will wonder about this so I thought I would explain right up front. It sounds like I took the name from Mount Everest and added “tall” to it with a fancy spelling, right? (It’s pronounced EVerest-all.) But that isn’t where I got the inspiration from. Mount Everest has nothing to do with the story.

(Actually, in Book Two — spoiler alert here! — I describe the view of Everestaal from the cliffs of Davarius as a verdant plain with farms, orchards and vast fields of green grass spreading out for miles to the blue hills far beyond in the distance. It’s completely different from Davarius, which is a stronghold of rocky snow-covered mountains that I imagine to be quite similar to the Alps.)

Before I ever even got the idea to start writing my story, the name Everestaal was given to me by my younger son Rory, who was probably all of two at the time (he is now 35 and towers over me at 6’5″!). He has always been so fun and creative, and back then he used to come up with the most incredible names for things. I remember he showed me his toy rubber lizard one day and I asked him, “Oh, what is your lizard’s name?” Without missing a beat, he replied, “Ten Gilda Hoopenfly.”

Well, one day I was in the kitchen and Rory marched in with a blue toy bucket crown on his head, proclaiming in a low authoritative voice, “I am the King of Everestaal and I am the King!” I asked him to repeat that, so he did, and then marched back out of the room.

I will never know how such a name sprang from his two-year-old imagination, but I will never forget that fun parent-child moment. Right then and there, I said to myself that someday I would write a story about the King of Everestaal. My idea was a little children’s book for Rory, certainly not the fantasy series that I’ve ended up with. But it was probably just after that time when I went through deliverance ministry and received the picture that inspired The Rose In The Fire (see previous post), so it was fresh in my mind when I began writing.

So now you know where the name came from. Fellow writers, take note: your muses can come from anywhere! Even a seemingly insignificant moment with a child.