and i won't tell 'em your name

"name" by the goo goo dolls & naming characters

. . . except I WILL be telling you their names, that’s the entire point of this newsletter lol.

At this point, there are only TWO WEEKS left until The Art of Catching Feelings comes out, and I’m feeling a little frazzled with social media¹, event preparation, other promotional stuff, then on top of all that I’m working on edits for my 2025 romance plus dealing with kids home for the summer . . . suffice to say that right now *I’M* the tired song playing on a tired radio (my favorite line in this one, incidentally).

So! I went to my little list of newsletter ideas, just to see if there was something fairly easy and fun I could write up, and I found this germ of an idea from a while ago where I would talk about how I go about naming characters. TL;DR: mostly some combination of vibes, people I know/admire, and a name that is right in front of me as I’m writing.

But first — would you believe I’d never seen this music video before? You probably would if you heard me remind my husband for the 815th time that I didn’t have cable growing up (my Doug reference in LITTOSK is stolen valor, I’m sorry, I get the joke of Doug Funnie having a closet full of the same outfit over and over but I don’t know that I’ve ever seen an actual episode of that show from start to finish WHEW that felt good to get off my chest!).

Since “Name” came out in 1995, it slightly predated my Great Cable Renaissance when my parents divorced and I’d go to my dad’s house on weekends and park myself by the VCR, ready to record my own personal mix tape of music videos from the novelty that was MTV and VH1 to me at the time. I still have a VISCERAL reaction to any of those songs — Natalie Imbruglia’s “Torn,” Rammstein’s “Du Hast,” Harvey Danger’s “Flagpole Sitta,” Chumbawumba’s “Tubthumping” (IYKYK), Fastball’s “The Way” (IYKYRFK!!!).

I’ll stop listing songs because I could go all day, but I guess by the time I was watching they’d already moved on to show The Goo Goo Dolls’ video for “Iris” way more, which makes sense! It’s iconic. Sometimes when I’m rolling around in my desk chair I like to pretend I’m just looking through all the telescopes like in that video lol.

I do love “Name” tho, and think about some of its lyrics all the time. And scars are souvenirs you never lose/the past is never far . . . And don’t it make you sad to know that life/is more than who we are? I’m a little embarrassed by how much I’ve stared at the ceiling letting that last one blinking-cursor me.

Anyway. On to names!!!

Phoebe Rachel Walsh. I’ve made no secret of the fact that I was listening to a lot of Phoebe Bridgers while writing LITTOSK (Punisher had just come out a few months before), so that’s the big inspiration behind Phoebe’s first name. I’ve also just always loved the name Phoebe, and think it’s the right mixture of pretty and strong and a little strange. Funnily enough, my daughter also happened to be REAL big on the Phoebe and Her Unicorn books at the time, and she pronounced the name “Foe-bee” until I eventually corrected her. I almost hated to do it because it was so cute.

Phoebe’s last name is an homage to one of my best friends, who also happens to be the person most likely to know EXACTLY while Forensic Files episode I’m talking about from only a few minor details. It’s also a little bit for John Walsh, the guy behind America’s Most Wanted, but really I only thought about that after I’d already named her after my friend.

I wrote the first draft of LITTOSK in a blur of a couple months while trying to submit it to a mentorship contest, and I gave Phoebe the middle name Rachel for Rachel Lynn Solomon, one of the mentors I was planning to apply to! Talk about building the plane while you’re flying it lol. Picture me, frantically writing that scene at the park where Sam guesses her middle name, and we’re like mere WEEKS from the deadline, and I’m like “Phoebe . . . Phoebe . . .” *lands on list of mentor names in notebook* RACHEL! I didn’t even think about the Friends connection until after, but then I thought that was kind of funny and something where she’d definitely be like don’t you DARE make any Friends reference right now.

Samuel Copeland Dennings. For Sam, I knew I wanted his name to be something classic and all-American and normal. He’s just a normal guy! I landed on Sam SOLELY so I could make the one “comma Son of” joke at some point and I’m very proud of that. I thought it would be a fun detail that his middle name is just a family name — which also shows his connection to his family, something that Phoebe herself doesn’t always feel like she’s had. Dennings is because I was looking at a lot of pictures of Kat Dennings, who is probably the closest thing to a facecast for Phoebe’s character as you could get.

Side Characters. I named Phoebe’s brother Conner for Conor Oberst (I told you I was listening to a lot of Phoebe Bridgers!!!) but changed the spelling so as not to make it quite so obvious haha. This is now the bane of my existence because I admit I forget all the time exactly how I spelled it. See also: Alison with one l, who I named that way for Alison Green of Ask a Manager, but now the Allison most prominently in my life spells it with TWO l’s, so I’m always getting mixed up.

I really don’t want to waste y’all’s time going character by character, but one last extremely side character is Jewel, the woman who works at the music shop who makes Phoebe’s jealousy flare a bit because she just KNOWS she’s into Sam. I wanted to give her one of THOSE NAMES where you’re just like “oh of course she would be a Jewel!” and I started to write it in a snarky way like “ugh what a stupid name” and then AS I WAS WRITING I was like you know what, no! Jewel is a beautiful fucking name! I love the singer-songwriter Jewel! You should be so lucky for your name to be Jewel! And so I called an audible on myself and finished Phoebe’s thought with basically something along those lines, about how cool the name was. Work through your own jealous shit without being a catty asshole!

Lauren Fox. I don’t usually fill out full character sheets for my characters or anything like that, but I think a lot about them and as I write I tend to compile quite a lot of facts I know about them even if they don’t make their way into the story. That being said, I never did give either of my main characters in Cold World middle names, even in my head! That just never seemed important to think about, idk. Lauren’s first name has a couple inspirations behind it — Lauren Mayberry from Chvrches, one of my favorite bands; a literary agent I was querying at the time (more on this later) . . . but a lot of it was really about feeling right to me. She’s just always been Lauren. One thing I think a lot about with names is how different they can be just from a small tweak in the spelling or pronunciation. A Laura is different from a Lora from a Lori from a Laurie from a Lauren from a Lauryn . . . you know? Lauren has always been a Lauren.

I wanted her last name to be short and simple, and probably was thinking about F-O-X from You’ve Got Mail only because I’m pretty much always thinking about it, but I really couldn’t tell you. I’m sorry to not have a more interesting story behind Lauren Fox’s name, but it’s just kinda always been her name in my head! She arrived that way!

Asa Williamson. If you’ve read my acknowledgments you already know this, but Asa’s first name came from a friend of my brother’s who I had a very minor crush on growing up. I always feel like I have to clarify this “very minor” part because naming a character after someone feels like SUCH a declaration somehow, but truly, I just thought it was a very cool and interesting name! The main thing I could tell you now about the original Asa was that he played guitar and made the argument to my brother that Ixnay on the Hombre was the better Offspring record than Smash, which made him extra cool in my book because a) standing up to my brother like that about music!! I could never!!, and b) I feel like NOBODY thought Ixnay on the Hombre was the better record² so what an edgy opinion to have! What a freethinker!

(It’s pronounced Ay-suh, btw!)

Asa’s last name was a matter of “okay, what would go well with that first name” me just kinda metaphorically looking around the room for anything that grabbed my attention. Which was how I ended up using the last name of a good friend of ours, 1/3 of my beloved #ThisFuckingTeam baseball group chat, I saw it and I just plopped it right in there. I didn’t even give it a second’s thought.

. . . until he came over right when I happened to be opening up my box of author copies. He bent down to grab one and was like, “Oh, cool, is this the book?” and only as he flipped it over to read the back was I like !!!!!!!!!!!

(He thought it was funny, and he got the very first author copy of anyone, so . . . thanks for the name?)

Side Characters. I started writing Cold World while I was querying agents with LITTOSK, so several side characters are named for literary agents! Becca, Kiki . . . Like I said, sometimes I just look at names in front of me and if they fit, they fit. Sonia, the coworker who loves romance novels, was named for romance novelist Sonia Hartl who was very sweet and supportive after Pitch Wars. I named John just because I like the name and wanted a solid, unassuming, quiet name for that character, and I threw in another name as a one-time mention to go with his because it just felt right. Little did I know one day I’d write their book, though, which is a good reminder to always be careful when choosing names! You never know the ones you might want to do more with later.

Daphne Sarah Brink. I almost have to tell you about Daphne and Chris together tbh. This is going to sound so weird, maybe, but I’ve been telling myself romantic little stories to fall asleep for as long as I can remember, at least since high school. And the plots change, the characters change, I have written parts of these stories tucked away in various things I’ve published but I’ve never written a full Dream Story out from start to finish because they’re mine. (The scene where Asa and Lauren get locked in Cold World definitely has its origins in a Dream Story, I’ll say that much.)

Anyway, Chris and Daphne — those two names together — have been the two leads in many Dream Stories, spanning a really long time. I *think* I originally got Daphne from a chapter book I read as a kid, where all I can remember is that the girl on the cover had very long brown hair and she was always getting in trouble for daydreaming and staring out the window but in truth a lot of it was because she was very sad since her parents had divorced. I thought it was a pretty name, and one day I hope to figure out this book and track it down so I can read it again because I have a feeling it would transport me a little.

Sarah is an homage to the same Sarah who’s done all the preorder/extra art for KT Hoffman’s The Prospects! Brink is an homage to one of my college roommates.

Christopher Ray Kepler. I love the name Chris. I always have! I stg half the guys I crushed on in elementary through high school were named Chris (AND IN THE END ONLY MAYBE ONE-EIGHTH OF THOSE DESERVED IT). It also just felt like a great baseball player name, and then of course it ended up lending itself to an all-star heckle. I swear I just picked “Ray” because I thought it went well with Christopher — like I can picture parents naming their kid Christopher Ray, it has a good ring to it! — but then someone thought it was a nod to my favorite hometown team and I like that much better so let’s go with that.

Kepler is kinda a nod to Max Kepler on the Twins, who I DO think is very cute! There’s also a bookstore in San Francisco called Kepler’s, where I keep dreaming of eventually doing an event for this book based on the name alone. But the real, honest-to-god truth when I originally picked this name is that I was just thinking of last names I liked that would go well with “Chris,” somehow I thought of April from Grey’s Anatomy, and I thought, okay her last name would go perfectly! And I only realized after I’d already started writing that her last name is KEPNER, not KEPLER, but by then he was already a Kepler so there ya go. I think it worked out better this way.

Side Characters. Daphne’s sister-in-law, the original sideline reporter for the Carolina Battery, is named Layla because isn’t that just the name of someone who TAKES NO SHIT? Doesn’t a Layla just GET SHIT DONE? I don’t know, that’s my impression of Laylas. Daphne’s ex Justin is named for Justin Timberlake because I thought it would be funny (this was before Britney’s memoir but c’mon, we already knew). Randy Caminero is an homage to a couple Rays players. There’s a very small character named Greg who I originally named Doug before realizing there were too many D names, only I forgot to change one and so in copyedits I found myself in a “Dwigt” situation where my copyeditor was like, “Who’s Doug?” I still call him Doug sometimes in my head. Even when I wrote my notes for this section, I wrote him down as Doug. But now you know that it was NOT a Nickelodeon reference because I didn’t have cable as a kid!!!

There’s less than two weeks until The Art of Catching Feelings is out, which is WILD to me. As a reminder, you can preorder directly from my local indie Tombolo Books, and I’ll sign and personalize the book any way you want! Just write your personalization request in the comments to your order. You also will automatically get the art print, baseball cards, and Carolina Battery sticker with your order. I’m going in NEXT WEEK to do this, so definitely get those preorders in (if you want to lol)!!!

I should also have all the swag with me at various events I’ll be doing to promote the book (Tombolo on 6/20, Spellbound on 6/22, East City Bookshop on 6/28, The Ripped Bodice in Brooklyn on 7/1, Parnassus Books on 7/8, The Novel Neighbor on 7/11, and Eagle Eye Bookshop on 7/13).

If you ordered from anywhere else (including internationally), you can fill out my Google form and I’ll send the preorder swag to you separately! I also just happened to see that Eagle Eye Bookshop ships internationally and says they’ll ship your signed book to you after I come in to sign on 7/13, just saying.

Currently reading . . . I recently finished The Mango Tree: A Memoir of Fruit, Florida and Felony by Annabelle Tometich and WOW. I loved this book so much. You know your girl loves a celebrity memoir, but I almost forgot how much a “regular” person memoir can HIT. I got to see Annabelle talk about this book on a great panel with other Florida writers a few weeks ago at the Orlando Book Festival, and she was so thoughtful and engaging when talking about growing up as the seemingly-rare-sometimes-born-and-raised Floridian that it made me even more eager to read the book. (One point on that panel that really stayed with me is how one reason why Florida gets talked about so much — yes we’re weird, yes we’re a political hotbed, yes we have very robust record laws that makes all our weird shit hit the news wire — is just that a LOT of people have some connection to Florida! Even if it’s just a grandparent living there or a one-time childhood visit to Disney or whatever.)

Anyway, this memoir starts off with Annabelle’s mom becoming a “Florida Man” meme, so to speak, when she shoots at a car leaving her yard after someone stole mangoes from her tree. From there, it traces all kinds of stuff about growing up in Ft. Myers as the daughter of a Filipino mom and a white father, family traumas, the struggle to fit in, reconciling parts of your heritage, dealing with a mother you both fear and admire, growing up and figuring out what story you want to tell, etc. It made me tear up several times (talk to me about the bottom of page 103 when you get to it!!!!!). I can’t recommend it enough.

watching . . . I’m a faithful reader of Kerry Winfrey’s No One Asked, so when I found myself at loose ends the other day, restlessly wanting something to watch but not knowing what, of course I found myself in the warm comforting embrace of Kerry’s fave Dakota Johnson. Netflix warned me How to Be Single was about to leave the platform so I was like, sure, why not. It was enjoyable! I ALSO teared up at a part in this movie that normally wouldn’t have gotten to me and that’s when I was like ohhhhhh yeah that’s right I think my period is due soon. You’d think I’d learn.

listening to . . . Due to the aforementioned hormonal rollercoaster and some semi-provoked but probably disproportionate rage, all I’ve wanted to listen to was Wither Blister Burn + Peel, Stabbing Westward’s 1996 masterpiece of quiet, desperate pain mixed with lots of yelling lol. I’m such an asshole/God, I’m such a stain/I just keep fucking up/again and again — me doing my Monday morning affirmations!

preordering . . . June just WILL NOT LET UP with amazing books!!! I have the below on my radar and I *still* know I’m managing to miss some:

• Heartwaves by Anita Kelly

• A Love Like the Sun by Riss M. Neilson

• Curvy Girl Summer by Danielle Allen

• Not in Love by Ali Hazelwood

• Director’s Cut by Carlyn Greenwald

• The Rom-Commers by Katherine Center

• Everyone I Kissed Since You Got Famous by Mae Marvel

• One Last Summer by Kate Spencer

1. Just in case anyone is thinking the terrible thoughts I am beating up my own self with, YES I am doing the absolute bare minimum with social media right now and that is paradoxically part of what is stressing me out because I know I should be doing more lololol.

2. I don’t know if I would say the BETTER record . . . but I admit I listen to Ixnay more!