Real Names for Imaginary Friends: How Hence Got His Name by April Lindner (A SUPER SPECIAL GUEST POST!!!!!!!!)

Real Names for Imaginary Friends: How Hence Got His Name

I get asked a lot about “Hence,” the name I gave to the moody, rough-around-the-edges guitarist Catherine falls in love with in my novel Catherine.  Where did the name come from?  Since the novel draws inspiration from Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, why didn’t I simply name the male lead Heathcliff or, at least, Heath?  Is anybody in the world really named Hence? 

Well, the answer’s a bit embarrassing, because it reveals two things: how old I am and how weird I am. 

Back in the dark days before the Internet, I used to read the phonebook for fun.  Remember phonebooks?  They don’t really exist anymore…or at least I haven’t seen one in years.  But back when a thick copy of the White Pages landed on my doorstep, I would amuse myself by leafing through it for interesting names.  When I found a name I liked, I would jot it down, reasoning that someday when my son got a little older I might find the time to write fiction, and when that day came I would need good character names.

One day while browsing through the Cincinnati phonebook, I stumbled across a listing for Hence and Velva Eversole, and fell in love with their quirky, musical names.  I imagined they might be brother and sister, never married, or maybe living together after their spouses died.  I pictured Hence as a big middle-aged guy in overalls and Velva as a sweet-faced woman in a housedress.  I thought they might be from a small Ohio town but for one reason or another they had been transplanted to the big city where they were more than a little bit homesick.  I vowed I would write about them someday, but I never did.

Still, when the Cincinnati phonebook made its annual appearance on my doorstep, I would always look up Hence and Velva.  One year, Hence’s name disappeared and my heart broke for poor lonely Velva.  I moved away from Cincinnati, but I never forgot them.  And when I was working on Catherine, I thought of Hence and Velva, my old imaginary friends.

First, I needed a last name for Catherine.  Inspired by Catherine Earnshaw in Wuthering Heights, she’s beautiful, confident, impetuous, romantic, and a bit self-centered—the kind of girl who could inspire a love beyond reason.  What name could have suited her better than Eversole?  Change a couple of letters and you’ve got Eversoul—with its suggestion of eternity and soulfulness and maybe even of ghosts.  Eversole even starts with an E—like Earnshaw—and something about that satisfied the superstitious side of my personality.

Next, I needed a name for the boy Catherine loves.  Intense and brooding, with a past so brutal he refuses to speak of it, he reinvents himself by running away to New York City—to the front door of The Underground, the legendary nightclub owned by Catherine’s father.  Like Heathcliff, and like the rockstar he hopes to become, my character would go by a single name: Hence.  A little Googling taught me that the name is sometimes short for Henry…or maybe Henderson.  It’s a rare name, and probably mostly a rural one, which suited my character’s small-town past.  And it even starts with “H”—like Heathcliff. 

Sure, I could have named my character Heathcliff or Heath.  But I couldn’t resist the chance to name check my old imaginary friend Hence Eversole.  And some day, when the right character comes along, I hope to pay tribute to Velva as well.

Guest Blogger!!! APRIL LINDNER!!!!!!

Writing about music isn’t easy.  How can mere words convey the excitement of a backbeat, a smoking guitar solo, a throbbing bass rift, or a lead singer throwing his whole body and soul into the high notes?  When I set out to write Catherine, the last thing I meant to do was write about rock music.  For one thing, I’d just been there and done that.

In my first novel, Jane, a retelling of Jane Eyre, my reluctant heroine falls in love with an international rock star on the brink of his big comeback.  In writing that novel, I drew on everything I knew about arena rock, touring, and the lives of celebrity musicians.  As a hardcore fan who sees a lot of live music, I’d done a fair amount of imagining what a rock star’s everyday life would be like, and how a celebrity might find himself falling in love with an ordinary young woman.  In fact, I’d spent most of my teen years, and, quite a few of my adult years too, musing on this very subject. 

When I finished writing Jane, I thought I’d said everything I had to say on the subject of music.  But when I set out to write Catherine, I was a little lost. I knew that if I wanted to update Wuthering Heights, I would need a setting that was dramatic and a little dangerous, one that could be as important to the story as its characters would be.  At first I envisioned a doomed romance set in the remote and unforgiving climes of New Hampshire’s White Mountains.  I thought Catherine could be the daughter of a corrupt local politician, and Heathcliff might be at troublemaker from the wrong side of the tracks.  But my story just didn’t gel. I couldn’t care about it in that intense way a writer needs to about the worlds she’s trying to build and inhabit.

Then one night about three chapters in I happened to be seeing a show at the Stone Pony, a legendary club in Asbury Park, New Jersey.  As I held my little square of the packed floor, straining to see above the heads of the people in front of me, letting the music sweep me along, I felt it again—that old familiar rush I feel when I’m seeing a really good live show.  And I realized that feeling was a lot like the exhilaration I had felt while writing Jane.  I had missed that passion and I wanted it back.

I knew, suddenly, what I had to do to make Catherine come alive—for myself and for readers.  I had to set the story in a world I cared about.  I would make it a different slice of the music world this time—a punk rock nightclub on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.  And Hence, my Heathcliff character, wouldn’t be a star; he’d be a hungry, striving guitarist who might make it some day—or who might not.  As for Catherine, she’d be the daughter of a nightclub owner, a club as big and important as CBGB, one that could make or break the careers of young strivers like Hence.  She’d know better than to fall in love with a musician who might be interested in her more for her father’s sake than her own—but just this once she wouldn’t be able to resist. 

Catherine fell into place that night.  Picking a setting and a scenario that mattered to me made all the difference. As hard as it can be to write about music, to convey its magic with mere words, I seem destined to try over and over again.  Not too surprisingly, music plays a key role in Love, Lucy, my third novel due out in January 2015.  And these days I’m even blogging about rock music.  Here’s a recent post about Jesse Malin, the musician I was seeing that fateful night at the Stone Pony, and whose music kept playing in my head as I wrote Catherine: http://aprillindnerwrites.blogspot.com/2013/10/weve-got-that-pma-night-at-wonder-bar.html

Lexi's Interview with the Wonderful April Lindner (Part 2)!!!!!

Readers,

Here's part 2 of the interview!!!

April Lindner Interview (Part 2)

What’s your favorite guilty pleasure?

Sitcoms.  I watched a lot of them when I was little, and I still find them comforting.  I just blitzed through the first seven seasons of How I Met Your Mother and I’m a little homesick for that world and those characters.  I also have a weird and abiding love for Italian pop music.  I started listening it to practice the language, and now I love it for its own sake.

What do you like to do when not writing?

I love live music.  I go to way too many concerts.  I’ve seen Bruce Springsteen over fifty times, but there are a lot of other acts I follow.  Also I love to travel and am obsessed with learning to speak Italian; I listen to Italian radio stations, read Italian magazines, and dream of living there someday and learning to speak like a native.

Which book boyfriend would you choose?

Though I have a longstanding crush on Mr. Rochester, he would be a difficult and demanding boyfriend.  So I’ll say Henry Tilney of Northhanger Abbey.  He’s charming, witty, and deeply kind.  And he can dance!

What were you like as a teen? And in college?

In high school I was very shy.  I had a handful of very good friends and basically never spoke to anybody else.  We all hung out in the band room; Mr. Dugal the music teacher rigged it so we could all skip study hall and homeroom and just be ourselves in his orange-carpeted sanctuary.  My best friend and I hung out together and went to a lot of rock concerts, but other than that my social life was pretty quiet; I spent a lot of time in my room, writing, drawing, dreaming,and playing guitar.

When I went off to college at the University of New Hampshire, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.  I moved into a special interest dorm for the creative arts—a bigger and even better version of Mr. Dugal’s band room--and was surrounded by painters, musicians, writers and actors.  I took a lot of creative writing class and felt generally thrilled to be in a bubble of young people who got to spend our days thinking about literature, writing, film, art, and music history. Also I met the guy I would go on to marry and people who to this day are among my closest friends.

What would you tell to today’s teens?

I don’t feel qualified to pass on advice to all teens, but to the ones who were shy and nerdy like me, I would borrow the words of that wise campaign aimed at gay teens who are bullied and discriminated against: it gets better.  In middle school I was bullied pretty relentlessly; in high school the popular kids were actually kind and polite, but I suffered from a kind of post traumatic stress disorder from all that earlier bullying. I still felt as though I had to hide my inner quirkiness just to pass unharmed through the world.  But once I got past high school I saw there were places in the world for someone like me; I just had to get out there, let my freak flag fly, and find my soulmates. 

What do you want your fans to know about you?

I guess that the books I choose to retell are all books that have, in one way or another, changed my life.  If they like my books, I hope they’ll go back and read (or reread) the originals. 

What do you want to tell them?

I’d like them to know that their enthusiasm for books makes my life as a writer worthwhile.  YA readers are the best readers!

Oh, and also, I’ve been blogging lately.  I’d love for them to visit my blog: www.aprillindnerwrites.blogspot.com.

Any parting words or anything you want to talk about or discuss? Feel free to write anything here.

I just want to say thank you for all the great questions!  

YAY!!! How much do you adore her? I know me and Ash love her, and CANNOT wait till the next book comes out!!!

Love,

Lexi

Lexi's April Lindner Interview (Part 1)

Readers,

Here's what y'all have been looking forward to! So let's dive right in!

Interview with April Lindner

As a teen and in college, what did you like to read?

My taste in books hasn’t changed much over the years.  I’ve always loved really thick novels that I can get lost in.  Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights were my favorites then and still are now.   But I’ve always  loved contemporary novels too, and poetry.  In high school and college I was obsessed with Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton, poets who turned their personal lives into art.

What books are you into now?

Novels are my favorite reading material, and I tend to read a mix of YA and adult.   Right now the stack beside my bed includes Diana Peterfreund’s For Darkness Shows the Stars, and Lisa Klein’s Ophelia, both YA literary retellings.  It also includes poetry—the Collected Poems of James Merrill, and Full Woman, Fleshly Apple, Hot Moon: Selected Poems of Pablo Neruda.  And there’s a memoir in there, Amy Smith’s All Roads Lead to Austen, about reading Jane Austen’s novel with book groups in Latin American destination. I also just finished reading Cheryl Strayed’s wonderful memoir Wild, about hiking the Pacific Crest Trail while mourning the death of her mother and the breakup of her marriage.  For the first few chapters I kept shaking my head and wondering why anyone would want to hike the Pacific Crest Trail with its bears and rattlesnakes and scary weather, and by the end I was making plans to hike the Appalachian Trail myself…or maybe just a tiny little portion of it.

How did you decide to update the classics?

I have a passion for retellings of classic literature; I can’t seem to get enough.  It was only natural that I would want to write one of my own, and Jane Eyre seemed ripe for an update.  Writing Jane was so satisfying that I wanted to keep going, so I dug into Wuthering Heights and wrote Catherine next.

What and/or who has influenced your writing?

This is a tough question because I’ve had so many influences.  I’ve taken a lot of creative writing workshops with amazing teachers, many of them poets: Mekeel McBride, Thomas Lux, Jean Valentine, Cornelius Eady, Andrew Hudgins, Don Bogen—too many to name, really.  I’ve also studied with the fiction writers Thomas Williams and Chuck Wachtel.   And then there are the authors I’ve never met but whose books have taught me important lessons about writing: Francine Prose, Ann Patchett, and Meg Wolitzer spring to mind.  And my Mom, Grace Lindner, who helped me to fall in love with books in the first place.

We know that you’ve updated Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre. What other classics are you working on or considering?

I’ve been working on a modernization of E. M. Forster’s A Room With a View, about an American backpacker in Italy whose encounter with a street musician changes her life.  I’ve just been told it will be published by Poppy in Fall or Winter 2014.

How long have you been writing?

Forever!  I’ve been writing stories and poems since I could hold a pencil.    

How long did it take to get an agent? How about to get published?

Things happened very quickly once I wrote Jane.  The first agent I queried took me on as a client, and one of the first batch of publishers she sent it to accepted it.  But that’s the tip of the iceberg.  I’d been working on my craft as a writer for decades, and have been struggling to establish myself as a poet for almost as long.  So the real answer is my whole adult life.

What would you like to tell hopeful writers?

Don’t give up.  There were many discouraging years when I was constantly sending my poems out to literary magazines and if I was very lucky I would get one acceptance a year.  But while I was sending work out I was also continuing to hone my craft.  Over time, the acceptances began coming more quickly.   No matter what, keep writing.

Also read deeply and widely.  It may seem like a paradox, but the more you read the more powerfully your own voice will emerge.  If you fall in love with one writer and read only them your voice will come out sounding like an imitation of that writer.  But if you read many writers your own voice will emerge, and it will be a blend of everyone you’ve read and your own unique sensibility.

Alright, Readers, you read it; Lucy's story is next!!! The rest of the interview is where I ask more personal questions, so stay tuned for Wednesday!

Sincerely yours,

Lexi

"Sorrow Woods" & A Special Announcement!!! (a happy Lexi review)

Readers,

First, let me announce the coming of a two or so part interview exclusive on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. Who with? APRIL LINDNER!!!!! She is the author of Jane and Catherine, and has another coming out next year!!!!! So be here and check it out!!!

Today's book is Sorrow Woods by Beckie Stevenson. This novel is really good and surprising.

Summary: "When Kaiden stumbles across Serena Scott whilst hunting in Sorrow Woods he thinks all of his birthdays have come at once. Finally, the girl that’s haunted and intrigued him and his parents for the last fourteen years is standing in front of him.

And she’s alive.

Serena should have known that he would shatter her life into a thousand pieces. It wasn't because of the gun, or the tattoos that snaked around his arm, but because he was the first boy that she’d ever set eyes on.

He wasn’t just any boy either; he was Kaiden Matthews.
He was dark, dangerous and strangely alluring.
And he was beautiful.

Serena’s life as she knows it is destroyed after Kaiden drops his bombshell. As the consequences of his actions begin to penetrate through into her life she vows to stay away from him, and while she might have been in his past, she refuses to be his future. 
Kaiden knows that in order for either of them to salvage anything from the mess he’s made he needs to make sure the secrets of his past stay hidden, but as they start to rebuild their lives they find themselves stuck in a whirlwind of secrets and confessions that could threaten to break their already fragile relationship." (Goodreads, I yuv yoooooou.)

This book was really good. There were some things that got me confused and frustrated (namely, Kaiden's gf). Also, I can't see how the reconstructing of one's world happened as fast as it did. Otherwise, this book was really interesting. It's in both Kaiden and Serena's points of view. Imagine living in the woods for most of your life, and then finding out from a complete stranger that your entire life was a huge lie. Then what would you do? This novel explores just that, and in a technically good way. (In other words, Serena and Kaiden's lives are realistic and well described. You feel like you know them very well.) I just think it was too fast pace for some of the events in the end. I do love this novel though. It was insightful and sweet, even though you can't even imagine what it feels like to be Serena or Kaiden.

In Conclusion: If you want a quick read that's interesting and not really covered too much in YA (never in this POV or way), then read this novel! It's good!


Rating:

3.8/5 trees

Now You: If you found out that your life was a lie, what would you do? Comment away!