The Sylvan Spy Answers Your Questions

"Where did the name 'Casey Grimes' come from?"

You have questions about the Casey Grimes stories and—except when the questions try to trick me into giving things away—we have answers. For a couple years, I’ve replied to your questions via email, but I realized it would be more fun for everyone if we treated them as a Reader Mailbag sort of thing.

So this is the first example of that.

"Where did the name 'Casey Grimes' come from?"

This question is from Ben, who wrote, “It could be totally a coincidence, but as a huge fan of the old TV show Chuck, two of the beloved characters on that show are John Casey and Morgan Grimes. Is that where Casey Grimes got his name?”

I love the level of research and sleuthing Ben brings to the table. Let’s be honest. His hypothesis is a good one. Many people watch old TV shows, and while I don’t watch a lot of television, I do favor older shows and movies along with college basketball.

Furthermore, lots of authors use tricks to come up with character names. One of the popular naming tricks is what we’ll call the Fav Character Mashup. You take a couple characters you like, smash their names together, and pick a combo that has a good sound.

This would totally work for John Casey and Morgan Grimes. If I’d used the Fav Char Mash trick, the other options would’ve been John Grimes, John Morgan, and Casey Morgan. Those are all pretty good, but hopefully you’d agree Casey Grimes is the most interesting of those four, has the best ring, and sounds the most intriguing and glorious.

Ok, enough beating about the Sylvan bush. Was Ben correct? Did he crack the code behind Casey’s name?

No.

No, he did not. But it was a great guess.

See you next time!

. . .

Ha ha ha.

Ok, where did the name “Casey Grimes” come from? Well, back in 2019 when I was writing the first book, I knew my main character should be a fairly normal person. You may have noticed he’s not crazy wealthy. He doesn’t have the IQ of a rocket scientist. He has no super powers and he’s not especially popular. In fact, as you probably remember, when The Mostly Invisible Boy begins, he’s got all kinds of trouble…like being mostly invisible.

At the same time, he’s reasonably good-looking, has a knack for climbing, is not stupid, and has some qualities—like being brave and caring about his little sister. In fiction, this type of character is called an “everyman.” In our story, we could call this type of character an “everykid.”

The idea is that an everykid has things in common with most kids, and most kids relate to an everykid in some way. They see things about the character they understand. From what readers tell me, most people see Casey this way, which is what I wanted.

Now an everykid character should have a low-key name. Not a super showy name. Not a rapper name. Not a Hollywood name. A down-to-earth kind of name. And that’s what I was thinking when I came across “Grimes.”

I heard “Grimes,” and I thought, Hey, kind of like grimy, getting your hands dirty, not afraid to do the work. Not stuck up. Maybe even humble, as in this person doesn’t have a big head and doesn’t think about himself all the time.

Here’s the awkward bit. That same year, there was a basketball player at the University of Kansas named Grimes. He was a freshman and he was supposed to be really good. KU is one of the best basketball colleges in the USA, and they have the best mascot in all the land, the Jayhawk, which could actually be a Sylvan monster…and may appear in one of my books.

But Grimes was not the best basketball player in all the land. He turned out to be terrible. And he had a rotten, me-first attitude. Therefore, I will never publicly give him credit.

I’m only mentioning this strange coincidence—here, in the safety of this secret message ring.

As far as Casey, I’m not sure when or where I first started thinking about it for my main character. But when I said it out loud a few times, and eventually put it together with Grimes, I thought, Yeah, there’s a kid who’s pretty real.

And that, my friend, is how we arrived at the name Casey Grimes.