What's in a Name?

I suppose I may as well take a moment and explain, since I'll get asked eventually anyway. Where does the name Ashtur come from?

Actually, it's the short from of the name Ashtur an'Vangan, which doesn't help one little bit. Back when I was in college, (ack, 20 years ago), I had a story idea. That was years before I even began to fool around with writing, but a story started to form in my head.

The story has long since been abandoned, on the grounds of being terminally boring, derivitive and pointless. It was a fairly standard Fantasy story, the usual swords and sorcery thing. Post apocalyptic, in that a large scale fire spell had gotten a bit out of hand (whoops!), but otherwise, meh.

Anyway, the story had your usual stock issue, older mentor/wizard, Ashtur an'Vangan. The "an'Vangan" isn't actually a name, but a title. It referred to the order of wizards he came from.

Well, to make a long story short, the world will never see Kaliar Machlar-Ashtara, his sister Celana an'Vangan, or any of the others who were in the mix. You may all breath a sigh of relief. The only remnant is that I've adopted the name Ashtur an'Vangan as my "net nick." It means nothing, but I'm used to it.

It's better than some other things I get called.