I dive into revisions on my Frog novel this weekend, with good feedback from lots of wonderful people to help guide my efforts. There's one point on which I'd like further help, though, and I entreat you, my readers, to weigh in with suggestions.

While the novel takes place in San Francisco, the protagonist comes from a city on the East Coast. That city is never named, for the very simple reason that it doesn't have a name yet -- it's a made-up place. I expect to write further novels about this protagonist, many of which will be set in the city where she lives, and I don't want to be shackled by the particularities of an actual city, so I plan to invent my own (like de Lint's Newford, or the innumerable towns Stephen King has invented). I've written a few stories about this protagonist, set in this city, so there are certain things I already know -- it's a coastal city, with a bay; it used to be an important port city, but the port isn't as thriving these days; there's a fair bit of heavy industry, sort of a rust-belt feel; there's a heavily urbanize city core. My mental view of this place incorporates chunks of Philadelphia, Boston, Washington DC, Savannah, and even New Orleans.

But the city does need a name, because there are moments in the novel where my protagonist would quite naturally mention the place that she's from, without any of the coy circumolocutions I employed in the first draft.

So -- suggest some city names. Preferably not the names of actual metropolitan areas on the East Coast! Preferably cool names that are wonderfully evocative! If I take a suggestion one of you offers, I'll give you some kind of a prize, to be named later. A chapbook, or a 'zine, or a free copy of this novel if it's ever published, or some such. Just drop your suggestions in the comments thread.