I find it amusing and heartening for some reason to see “famous” authors using a character name that I’ve thought up for one of my novels. I somehow feel like it validates my own work as an aspiring author.
The other day I was looking at the description for Fred Saberhagen’s Empire of the East, and noticed that the protagnist’s name is Rolf. The five of you who have read my Lute of the Sparrow may recognize that as the name of Jasper’s quirky sidekick.
Since mine is a side character, I could probably get away with passing it off as an “homage,” even though clearly I invented my name some ten years before I ever heard of Fred Saberhagen. (That he published his Rolf story in 1968, before I was born, is totally irrelevant.)
