Rebel…Gates…Jameson…Sandman…Cappers
Road names. The easiest definition of road name is to say it’s a nickname. Usually they’re given after an event or incident and have meaning to not only the man now known as the moniker, but to the rest of his club. No man chooses his road name. They have to be earned in some manner. That road name becomes more their identity than their birth name.
I’ve already talked about how Rebel got his name and have a post planned for Gates and Kaija as well. Instead of giving anything away from future books, I decided to take a few tertiary characters and give them a bit of a backstory on their names.
Scab
Oh, the lovely Scab. He’s a dirty little shit, isn’t he? Scab is my Alabama boy, born Mitchell Higbey sometime in the 1920’s. He grew up on a pig farm surrounded by his father and four brothers, his mother having passed away when he was just a toddler. He’s an Anbizen shifter, turned sixty years prior to the start of Claiming His Fate after a night of carousing with one of his older brothers. Wrong place, wrong time kind of situation, though his brother managed to escape.
Mitchell Higbey earned his nickname after he spent an evening with a prostitute who happened to have a large sore on her lip. When his denmates tried to explain the sore was a form of herpes, Mitchell got angry and yelled, “It ain’t no herpes, you dumbasses. It’s just a little scab.” And so he will forever be known as Scab.
Magnus
The man I love to hate. Magnus was Magnus from the second he stepped in to my head and demanded I add him to a story. He’s short, much shorter than Gates or Kaija really cared to comment on during Claiming His Need. A man that short sometimes has a bit of a Napoleon complex. Especially one who views Anbizen shifters as lower-class citizens, as this particular Borzohn shifter does.
Born Willis Henry, he earned his nickname soon after he joined the Feral Breed. As a shifter hand-selected by the leader of the NALB, he felt he was great at everything and made sure his denmates knew it. From interrupting conversations to voice his opinion to trying to tell the den mechanic how to fix a problem on Klutch’s bike, he made sure everyone knew who he was long before they needed to. The Latin word “magnus” means “great,” and so the Magnus road name was born.
Klutch
Road captain, competent support person to the den leadership, and a man you want on your side during a fight. Klutch blew into the first chapter of Claiming His Need quite suddenly. He wasn’t planned, nor was he truly necessary as a character, but the man had a presence that made me type the word Klutch. He’s a burly guy, broad-chested with huge biceps, and his pale skin and reddish hair give away his Scottish heritage. If he wasn’t a wolf shifter, I imagine he’d be a fireman. He’s also dependable and loyal. If Gates is Rebel’s right hand, Klutch is his left.
Born Liam Shanahan, the thirteenth son of two highly-regarded Scottish shifters, he earned his nickname after he organized a team of shifters to make repairs not just to their denhouse, but to all the houses on their block after a tornado blasted through the area. A baseball fan from way back, Blaze commented to Rebel that Liam “truly thrives in clutch situations.” The C was replaced with a K as the brothers agreed the letter seemed harder, more fitting of a man as strong as their Klutch.
There’s no plan for Klutch to have his own book but he’s one of my favorite Breed members. You may see more of him in short stories as the world progresses. I don’t know. But I like him. A lot.
That’s it…six hundred words into how my characters earn their road names. Hope you enjoyed this as much as I did.
