Heather’s Bookshelf: Author Interview with JP Lane

What inspired you to write “The Driftwood Tour”?

Lane: Years ago I began writing short stories for myself, simply to keep the stories of my travels alive. I had a Word doc with sections for New Zealand, Thailand, etc. and the memories I wanted to keep of those places. I tend to ask “What if?” questions in my mind and I started playing with the idea of a musician who had forgotten all of his songs and had to re-learn them. It grew from there and many of the larger themes of the story are based on those initial questions. What if you had to learn your own songs from someone who didn’t like your music? What if the teacher didn’t even know it was you who had written them? Hmmm…if they don’t know it’s you then you’re probably not that famous or recognizable to the average person. 

Having said that, the book is really about family, humility, and the personal growth we experience as we try to overcome the challenges that life throws at us. In this case, he’s living a fairly charmed life and then everything begins to unravel until he is truly humbled, both physically and psychologically.

How did you come up with the names of your main characters?

Lane: I didn’t use any process, but I was conscious of how the names would sound in other languages. The protagonist is from a prominent “old money” family so I thought of a kid you might meet at an expensive boarding school. Thurston Frederic Underwood! Everyone calls him “Wood.” As I developed his mother’s character I took off the k of his middle name because she, a classically trained pianist, named him after Frederic Chopin. My only advice would be to develop the characters to the extent that any names you come up with will immediately feel right or wrong.

 Here are a few others:

 His mother, Charlotte: Named after Charlotte Sometimes, the Cure song.

His musician sidekick, Jesse: Younger guy from the south…Jesse sounded right.

Rachel, his band manager/love interest: Rachel just felt right. She’s a badass.

Craig, a friend in Tokyo was an amalgam of two really cool guys I knew there, Chuck from my hometown in California, and a Canadian named Greg. Both of them still live in Japan and have never met each other!

Olive: I always think it’s funny when parents name their child and assume they will go by that name. At some point, Olivia decided she was going to call herself Olive.

Atsushi is a shout out to Japanese dude who was on our swimming team in California. He barely spoke any English and we eventually got back in touch after I learned Japanese. Life is funny.

Sophia Balmaceda, Wood’s lawyer. Sophia is my lovely daughter’s name and Balmaceda is the name of the street where I lived in Chile during high school.

Tip: Do your homework. All of the Estonian names were from a search I did of the most common baby names from the 1970’s in Estonia. They’re not Russian.

Is there anything that you want readers to know about you, your writing process or your book?

Lane:  I was in a rock band and felt comfortable writing about a lot of things that happened in the book, for example, the scenes from the recording studio. One of the most enjoyable parts was coming up with ridiculous band names, like the hard rocking Featherdusters, Wood’s mortal enemies. There’s also a group of spoiled rich kids who complain about everything called Kwicherbichin. Make it fun for yourself.

 I wrote a lot of the book by hand into notebooks then typed them into a Word doc. This allowed the story to truly flow because I wasn’t seeing squiggly lines on the screen when Microsoft thought I needed a semicolon. That was a very positive change for me once I started doing that and I made sure to write every other line so I had room to make notes, add arrows, etc. It was also important to be comfortable writing when I only knew the basics of that scene (I think of them as scenes). For example, I’m thinking, “Wood is a junior in high school. His mom and uncle sit him down to tell him they’re hiring an SAT tutor for him and that he needs to get his shit together.” Then I start writing. I don’t even know at that point who the tutor is, how Wood feels about it, what they would say in response…nothing. I just start writing and see where it takes me. After that, it’s all editing and putting the quilt together.

I also used Excel to see the whole book and add reminders of things that were connected. For example, his mother receives a necklace from her lover and I added a note to remember that necklace when Wood tells Olive about his mother 100 pages later. 

When you encounter writer’s block, what do you do to break yourself out of it?

Lane: The only times I felt blocked were when I had trouble resolving something in the story. That happened a lot, but I simply would work on another part of the book when that happened. Since this was a musician on tour it was really challenging to figure out the logistics and make it work, especially with the seasons. You can’t have them playing an outdoor festival in Minnesota in February. But once I got that worked out I could jump around and write each little section. For example, they end up in Estonia after the Soviet Union breaks up and I based that largely on my trip to Kazakhstan in the early nineties. I wrote that without necessarily knowing what was coming before it – I just knew they played a gig in Estonia.

Are there any tips that you would like to share with other aspiring authors?

Lane: Don’t chase fads. Any agent with half a brain would have told JK Rowling that there isn’t much of an audience for a little boy with a magic wand. Girls aren’t going to read it. Adults won’t read it. Maybe write a self-help book. Those are selling really well these days! It’s a good thing she didn’t listen to them. You have to be realistic, but write the best story you can. Also, it’s good to be a little cynical when you write so you don’t fall into a trap of thinking people are going to automatically believe everything you write. I did a lot of explaining how things would work in the book simply because I know that a lot of readers are closed minded. Truth is stranger than fiction. I went to a George Clinton concert and there was a 60 year old man on stage wearing nothing but a diaper. I saw that with my own eyes so don’t tell me it doesn’t make sense to hook a microphone up to a sewing machine and wire it through a distortion pedal to make a badass wall of sound.

What is your favorite genre, book, and/or author?

Lane: I enjoy absurd humor. I liked The Thought Gang by Tibor Fischer and High Fidelity by Nick Hornby. I recently picked the book “Stoner” by John Williams for our book club, which I read years ago and loved. It’s about an English professor’s life and the challenges he faces as he tries to stick to his principles. I also enjoy the books by JJ Marsh. She writes suspense books in exotic places. She’s traveled the world and speaks Portuguese and German (and can get by in many other languages) so I feel that her writing is both exciting and believable.

What are you working on next?

Lane: The Driftwood Tour was my love letter to musicians and music lovers. I’m also a painter, so my next book will be about an art teacher who leads groups of people to exotic destinations to paint together.  The characters who come along will add to the plot. Unfortunately, the teacher gets in WAY over his head with the mob and begins smuggling various goods to post off his debts. We’re going to Italy next week and I’ll be taking copious notes because the first book will be set there.

 What if Bob Ross borrowed a lot of money from Tony Soprano?

Learn More About the Author and The Driftwood Tour:

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