October Novel Prep Challenge

I love strange place names. Here in Texas we have such notables as "Gun Barrel City" and "Possum Kingdom Lake". And the merger of two towns that created the amazing imagery of "Lacy Lakeview". (They just glued the names together. They're still physically two towns, but they operate as one municipality.)

In Minnesota, you have Minnehaha Falls and the town of Minnehaha Park that is named after it. Minnehaha literally means "Laughing Waters". Longfellow loved the name so much, he used it for the name of Hiawatha's love interest.

Up in Colorado, you've got Leadville, the Cache La Poudre river, and a mountain called Purgatory.

You have a variety of places called Hell, including one in Norway that does, in fact, occasionally freeze over. On the other hand, I've never heard of anyone naming their town "Heaven". Fear of hubris, I guess.

I suppose I'm bringing this up because I see too many 'ordinary' place names in fiction (how many Centervilles can there be, guys?), when you compare them to reality. This discussion simply inspired me to post something about it.
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Regards,
Eric Fretheim
Assistant Prep Leader, 2015 October NaNoWriMo Prep Challenge

"It is perfectly okay to write garbage-- as long as you edit brilliantly." ~C.J. Cherryh

“No, writing 50,000 words in a month is normal. You are not crazy. This is not insane.” ~Teri Brown