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Interesting question…I don’t write fantasy, per se (no magic, wizards or dragons) but my current series does take place in an alternative history Southeast Europe. So the cities and provinces that provide the locations for the stories are made-up.

For the names of characters, I used names of Southeastern European origin for the majority ethnicity, (Peter, Anna, Bogdan, Oksana) and names of Central/South Asian origin for the minority ethnicity (Preen, Arjun, Dunya.) I did this because I wanted to give my world a sense of authenticity, of being grounded in reality and history that I don’t feel totally made-up names can provide.

At the same time, I didn’t want to base either people group, or the conflict they’re involved in, on anything in our real world, so I attempted to create a sense of distance by making a whole bunch of stuff up…