Names

Question:

 My name is Allison. I read all your Alice books and love them, I used to go by Allie at school, but now I go by Alice, because your books are so amazingly good. And my name is close to Alice, which means I’m lucky. Anyway, i just wanted to ask you why did you name your character Alice. just curious. thanks!

Phyllis replied:

I’d have to go waaaaaay back and look at my notes, and reread The Agony of Alice, but I think it had something to do with the St. Agnes prayer card that Alice found, describing the torture and agony of St. Agnes.  Alice sometimes felt that her own life was pretty agonizing, embarrassingly so, and since her name also began with A, and had the same number of letters, it wasn’t hard for her to think of herself as St. Alice.