A few posts ago, I asked for help naming the main character of my new novel. I got many suggestions, one kinda grumpy rant from a person who didn't offer a suggestion after I answered their concerns, and a blow to my ego when I realized that many of my friends are way smarter than me and have words floating around in their head that make my lexicon look like a fifth grader's (although, I don't know if fifth graders would use the word lexicon, and I don't really know if I used it correctly.)
Today, I think I finally found the answer. I was out to lunch with my family when my sister KP--whose blog about parenting a toddler called Kraken and a tiny baby who will not ride in the car without screaming can be found here--mentioned that our waitress went to our high school. I sort of recognized her, but she was a few years ahead of me which means she may as well have gone to a completely different school altogether.
KP told me the waitress's name, my son shouted "Wolverine" over it because he got a Wolverine figure with pop-able claws from McDonald's and it's now his new favorite word over Buzz Lightyear, and I acted like I had heard her to let the conversation roll on.
After lunch, I couldn't stop wondering what the name actually was. I think her first name was Amanda or Ashley, and the last name Feck or Beck or Peck.
Thinking about the last name Peck really got my creative engine running. It's what Val Kilmer calls Warwick Davis in the movie Willow. It's a lot like speck without actually being speck, and Finnegan is basically a common speck through whom the story unfolds. Finnegan Peck, to me, calls forth the mental image of an everyman who faces their life's greatest adventure with stumbling, yet brave, steps. This makes it perfect.
He will be called Finnegan Peck, and he will almost be run down by a Minnesotan Nazi in a rape van while running from a burning building with gas on his shoe and a tear in the crotch of his pants. Let it be so!
