Q&A with Alisa Lynn Valdés

From my Q&A with Alisa Lynn Valdés, author of Hollow Beasts:

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

I tend to come up with book titles that are double entendres, sometimes even triple or quadruple entendres, catchy enough to entice a reader to open the book, but layered enough that at the end of the book the title will make sense on multiple symbolic levels. Hollow Beasts is no exception.

What's in a name?

I choose character names with deliberation. Jodi Luna, the protagonist of Hollow Beasts, has a name that is both symbolic and a bilingual double entendre. Jodi’s full given name is Jodilynn Luciana Luna. She’s a Hispana from northern New Mexico, with roots that go back in that area to the 1500s. Luna is a regional, old Spanish surname in New Mexico. It means moon. Jodilynn is a countrified anglo name that she shortens to Jodi, but jodí is the Spanish first-person past tense for...[read on]

Visit Alisa Lynn Valdés's website.

My Book, The Movie: Hollow Beasts.

Q&A with Alisa Lynn Valdés.

--Marshal Zeringue