The names : Baldassarre/Balthasar

I explained previously why I picked the girls' names to be Callista, Castalia, Cassiopea, Cassandra and Calliope.

Now it's the boy's turn.

But first of all, let's start with Baldassarre (Balthasar) himself.

Why: The Pirate Balthasar?

To be honest, ever since I came up with this story, when I was a kid, my friend and I would just call it: Pirates! (we still do, actually). I spent most of my high school years, then, writing stuff for Pirates, doing sketches, costumes, layouts and was never completely happy with the outcome. I mean the story was nice but it wasn't that original, it lost some of its comedy bits towards the end and it was plain and straight another version of The Black Corsair from Emilio Salgari.

One night, that I was supposed to go to a party for women's day, my friend and I met early and started talking about stuff and I proposed the idea of making the girl's cousin... funny and Pifo was born! We never made it to that party!

To be honest... it wasn't Pifo yet, it was Niccolò Machiavelli's grandson.

I had Roxanne instead of Castalia.

Kyle Kemp instead of Wilson Kane.

Jesse and Nestor instead of Cat and Foxy.

Roxanne had a cousin, Isa, who was much like Calliope. There was a cabin boy, who would turn out to be a girl... (can't remember her name, now O_o) and there was Westley! So Westley was there all along. Good boy!

Most of the quarrels you are going to see in this version of the story between I-am-not-going-to-say-who... were Kyle and Roxanne's. He had a sad past and she was the cure. How boring is that?

So my friend and I decided to add so much comedy to it that we ended up having too much material in our hands and still I wasn't happy with the main plot line. That's when the stories divorced, ha ha ha! Kyle and Roxanne took a different direction, they stayed on land, all the songs went with them (yes, it was a Musical) and the whole story became this weird, surreal comedy we enjoyed so much more writing and reading and singing a loud than a regular revenge story! (Besides one cannot think of writing a revenge story and really believe to surpass the Count of Montecristo! Better give it up! Dumas had said it all!)

So... everything else were... leftovers! What do you do with leftovers when you don't want to waste a thing? You add other ingredients, you microwave them and come up with new names and give the notes an order and turn them into something else. Balthasar became a novel... from which I then cut out snippets to make a musical (yes, I worked in the theater why shouldn't I give it a try with Balthasar as well... since the previous musicals had gone so well?).

But before this I have to explain why the leftovers became Balthasar!

I was in College, then, I lived with my sister and her friends from the dorms would come and visit her for coffee. They kept talking about this guy, which they called: Il pirata Baldassarre (the Pirate Balthasar). Apparently Baldassare was his last name and they called him a pirate because he had a goatee and earrings - which wasn't very common back then!

I think they mentioned he had black hair, black eyes and that he was super handsome and tall... I honestly never saw him, although I was dying to see a real pirate! On one hand I wasn't much of a socializer and on the other hand, when I got the occasion to actually see him... I turned my head the other way, afraid that the actual sight of the Pirate Balthasar would not meet my expectations... and I had already created Wilson Kane's image in my head.

That nickname... had such a nice ring to it, I should probably pay the rights to the girl who came up with it... but I don't know if I should credit Anna or Miranda for this... they were already talking about him with my sister, the name was prepackaged and delivered to me!

I absolutely loved it! I adopted it! I still like it a lot!

So Baldassarre ended up being Greek first... till I decided to make him Italian, or better yet, Sicilian... even though Baldassarre is not a Sicilian last name at all - but that's a detail, now, the Baldassarre could have migrated to Badia from Puglia! (I am not going to tell this story though!)