Alice Blog

Alice’s religion

Hi, I was just wondering if Alice had a religion or not. In the first book “The Agony of Alice” she said that they were methodist and in other books she says she’s not a very religious person and this seems to be a topic she struggles with a lot throughout the series especially when Mark dies.

The church her dad goes to is Unitarian/Universalist and is the church in which he signed her up for that course in sex that so embarrassed her, but then helped her.

Who was Pamela’s first love

Hi, this is a question about Pamela, who was her first love? We all know Pamela was very boy crazy and she bounced between Mark and Brian in several books until she started dating Tim who she lost her virginity to, but it seems to me that virginity wasn’t really a big deal to her. So who was Pamela’s first love?

I would have to go back and read the books to figure that out.  I’m not even sure she considered it “love.”   I know she was fond of Mark for awhile.  Not every girl is followed all the way through, so there were times in her life that were not recounted in which she probably dated several men before she married.

Inspiration for the Alice series?

Hello, I really want to know what inspired you to write the Alice series and what made you come up with it? How long did it take you to figure out how you would write it? and my final question is did you plan for it to be a whole series or just one book?

That was a long time ago, but I believe that the inspiration was reading about St. Agnes (I’m not Catholic, so intrigued me), who I believe was  a martyr because she refused to marry a nobleman, so had her breasts cut off–something like that.  And I got to thinking how a young girl today might view this.  Perhaps a motherless girl, who had to take all her questions to the supper table and ask her dad or older brother.  So I wrote “The Agony of Alice,” and thought that would be the extent of it.  But so many girls wrote to me, begging for more, and a reviewer wrote, “Alice’s many fans are waiting  for her further adventures.”  I talked to my editor and told her I would be willing to start a series as long as I didn’t have to write more than one book a year–could really take my time writing them, not turn them out like pancakes.  And she agreed.  And somewhere along the way I decided that 28 would be about the right number of books.

Deciding Alice’s name?

Hi. I was wondering how did you choose Alice’s name? How did you choose any of your character’s names? How do you choose their physical characteristics? Lastly, did you plan out Alice’s life from the very first book? Did you know she’d marry Patrick after they became childhood sweethearts? Did you know she’d have children with Patrick? or get breast cancer or suffer the death of a friend? sorry to bother you with so many questions! Have a very nice week mrs. Reynolds-Naylor! 🙂

I wanted a name similar to “Agnes” in “Agony of Alice.”  Wasn’t that the name of a saint on a prayer card that she found?  She began to think of her life as the “Agony of Alice” because of all the embarrassments.  I wasn’t sure yet about Patrick, and certainly not breast cancer.  Many things developed as I went along.

Alice the chef

Hi, First off, I want to say I 1,000% LOVE the Alice series and grew up reading her. My favorite book in the series is “Now I’ll Tell You Everything” because that’s where Alice finally gets to be with Patrick forever and she and her friends get their happily ever after, what was your most favorite part in that book? My main reason for writing this was, throughout the series we see Alice loves to cook and even considers being a chef and she always makes these delicious dishes, My question was do you like to cook? did you put your love and interest in cooking in Alice? 🙂

Actually, I don’t like to cook much.  It’s always dismayed me that a woman can spend hours and hours in a kitchen making a Thanksgiving dinner, and then watch it get eaten in a half hour.  I do like to bake, however, and will even double a recipe so that I can freeze part of it for later.  I just thought that it made something for Alice to love that I don’t.

Pamela Jones

I must confess that Pamela was one of my most favorite characters in the Alice series among others. I love how she was very loyal to Alice through everything even when she was a drama queen sometimes. How did you come up with Pamela’s character? were you friends with a girl like her? What I really loved about Alice and her friends was that even though they liked the same stuff, they had their own personalities and were each different. But I can honestly say that I loved the bond between Alice, Pamela, and Elizabeth. I love that they were able to tell each other anything and were always supportive of each other and always had each other’s backs no matter what, they even stayed best friends well into their 60’s and that’s a friendship we’re all envious of! Great job!

I think that Alice meets Pamela for the first time in “The Agony of Alice,” and doesn’t like her much, especially after that incident onstage.  But just like in life, after you get to know a person, you often become quite fond of them, and that was true of Alice and Pamela.

your character’s personalities

Hi! I was wondering how did you come up with your all your character’s personalities? Was it hard to describe their personalities when you were writing about them? I want to be a writer but I have difficulty describing things so how do you do it?

Well, it helped that I could develop their personalities over 28 books; I didn’t have to do it all in one book.  Bit by bit, I got to know them better, so little traits added up.  You get to know their personalities by what they said and the way they said it; by the way they reacted to things that happened to them.   I had more difficulties describing how they looked.  Lots of trouble with that.  I used to ask my family for photographic books of people when they wanted to know what I wanted for Christmas, and when I started a new character, I often leafed through these books looking for a special chin or eyebrows or cheekbones or something.  People have no idea what a writer goes through, do they?

Alice Is Amazing!

Hello!! So I grew up reading the Alice books and I absolutely LOVE them! they are so amazing! Great Job! I love how you ended the series! even though I was kind of sad it was the end, it was a good happy ending. A lot of people think the age of 60 is the end of your life but really it’s just a new beginning and Alice was really entering a new adventure. I absolutely cried when they found the time capsule and it made my heart melt to look back and think as if they were real people and say “Who knew they would make it here?”. I have to be honest with you and say I was so happy and in tears of joy when I saw that Alice and Patrick finally got married and lived their happily ever after, were you? I love the idea of childhood sweethearts getting married and growing old together, don’t you? I also love that Alice always was interested in traveling and Patrick made her dream come true and they’re traveling around the world together! I love how you’re very realistic even when reality hurts, but can I ask you do you think that time really does heal all wounds and that no matter what we’ll all be okay? sorry if I’m rambling I just really think the world of you! I hope you are in good health and are living a very exciting life you beautiful woman! 🙂

Wow!  I’d better look in the mirror again.  But I do still have my own teeth!  I wish that I could promise that all of us are going to come through this pandemic OK and that time heals ALL wounds–that nothing bad will ever happen to any of us.  But of course I can’t promise that.  What I can tell you is that the way we react to things has  a lot to do with whether we “ever get over it.”  If we see the girl at school who bullies everybody as someone is most probably very insecure inside, and is possibly slapped around and denigrated at home, her insults don’t seem quite so cutting.   If we turn our embarrassments into  funny stories to tell our friends, we don’t keep reliving them in secret over and over again.  If you think you’re not pretty enough to attract a husband, look around you!  You will be amazed to discover happily married couples where the husband is movie-star handsome and the wife quite plain.  People marry people who make them comfortable and happy.   Yes, I am a widow now, but I have many friends around me and my sons are doing well.  Yes, I still remember sadly the eight years I was married to a brilliant man who, after three years, became mentally ill and ended up in a mental hospital.  I am still very sad when I think about him and all he could have contributed to the world. But I eventually married again, had two boys and had a very wonderful, ordinary/extraordinary life.

Are Alice and Patrick Ok?

Hello!
I just wanted to know something to put my mind and heart at rest. Are Alice & Patrick and their marriage fine/great as we speak? Are they still madly in love and really together forever and eternity at the end of the series and even now?

Oh, m’gosh!  Positively, absolutely, truly 100% no kidding in love always and forever.

Patrick’s love for Alice

Hiya Mrs. Reynolds-Naylor!
I was wondering did Patrick mean it every single time he told Alice he loved her? Is she the only woman he loves with all his heart (Besides their daughter) Was she the first girl/woman he ever loved?

Hmm.  What’s with all the worried questions about whether Patrick loves Alice enough?  Does he have to donate two quarts of his own blood or something?  Yes, yes, yes, he loves her with his whole heart and he means it every time he says it.  But it may not have been the first woman he ever loved.  There are a zillion women in the world and he’s only been interested in a half dozen or so in his whole lifetime.  You can be truly in love with someone and yet decide that for many reasons, you would not be a good lifetime pair:  religion, age difference, goals in life, distance between you in miles, politics, personalities, etc.  There might just be one or several big topics between you that are extremely important to what you stand for or what you love that makes you think there would always be a huge separation between you, so you sadly part.  But that didn’t happen to Patrick and Alice.