In my original website iteration, I had a section called "Lazarus Expanded," which included some leftover scenes and scraps of information about the story; that website went through a massive meltdown a year or so ago, and I pretty much lost it.
Or so I thought. I found a database backup, which isn't the easiest place to pull from, but I've managed to recover some bits of information from my original "Lazarus Expanded" files. Here they are.
A few separate incidents from my own life sparked the idea. First, when I was a young child--about five years old--I fell through the ice while icefishing with my uncle. My uncle, fortunately, was able to grab me and pull me out of the water before I slipped beneath the ice. That incident etched itself in my memory, and I can still vividly recall the shock of the icy water as I plunged into the lake.
Second, when I was attending the University of Montana and pursuing my BA in English Literature, one of my many odd jobs was janitor in the University's Chem/Pharm building. During my time there, I had to clean the cadaver storage room, where cadavers were were wrapped in black plastic that looked very much like garbage bags. One of my fellow workers, a practical joker, wrapped himself in garbage bags one evening and lay on the floor. When the young lady unlucky enough to be cleaning that night came into the room and turned on the lights (it wasn't my night to clean the cadaver room, thankfully), she was startled to see a cadaver on the floor. She was even more startled when the cadaver sat up.
When I started writing Waking Lazarus, those two images--the boy slipping beneath the ice and drowning, and the body in the morgue sitting up--converged and became a story idea: what if there were a man who has struggled with recurring Near Death Experiences (the technical, but somewhat misleading, term for a person who has died and come back to life)? What kind of person would he be? What might those Near Death Experiences mean?
People always like to talk about themes when it comes to books, and I do have to say I wanted to explore themes that were important to me. So when people ask, "What are you trying to say in your books?" my answer is: "I can tell you what it means to me." The truth is, the book might mean something different to you. And something different still to Jane down the street. I firmly believe a book means whatever the reader takes out of it, and that it's not necessarily what the writer thinks.
So, when you read, it, write and tell me what it means to you. Until then, however, here's what it meant to me.
On a thematic level, I think Waking Lazarus is about destiny, and the resulting responsibility--or burden--of doing what we're called to do. That's part of why the novel is named Waking Lazarus, a Biblically-inspired title from the book of John: "Our friend Lazarus sleeps, but I go that I may wake him." Jude is like Lazarus on a couple of levels. First, and most obvious, he's been miraculously returned to life three separate times. Second, I picture him slumbering in secret, waiting to be awakened by his true calling.
My original working title for Waking Lazarus was, ahem, Non-Prophet. Yes, it was a cheap pun. But then, I've bought more than a few cheap puns in my day. When I began showing early drafts of the story to other writers at Zoetrope Studios online (www.zoetrope.com), one critiquer tried to convince me--more than once--I should call it The Reluctant Prophet. I cringed when I heard that. Non-Prophet may be a bit horsey, but The Reluctant Prophet sounds downright comical, don't you think? I told him it sounded like The Nutty Professor to me; he was horribly offended, and composed a long note to me about books and movies following "The Adjective Noun" constructions for their titles, and how many of them were NOT comedies. Oooh-kay.
So, following Non-Prophet, Waking Lazarus became my working title. When Bethany House bought the book in the Summer of 2005, we batted around a ton of other possible titles, and came up with six other final candidates: Turnabout, To Die is Gain, Near Life, Reprise, The Upward Spiral, and Signs of Life. We did a bit of informal surveying, considered all the possibilities, thought a lot about marketing...and decided to go with Waking Lazarus, the working title. That was always my favorite, although I did like something about all the others, too. Well, maybe with the exception of To Die is Gain; in retrospect, I think that we were trying way too hard with that one.
Not quite down there in The Reluctant Prophet territory, mind you, but pretty close.
One of the questions I get asked most frequently is: "How do you name your characters?" I wish I could say I have some complex theory or method (I know a few writers do), but the honest answer for me is, I usually go with what feels right more than anything.
That said, I do prefer unique or unusual names for my characters; you won't typically find a Jack, John, Jenny or Jessica in my novel, unless said character is a minor player. Maybe even someone who's going to die.
So, why "Jude"? Well, like the title of the novel, it had Biblical inspiration, being one of the books of the New Testament. I originally toyed with the idea of "Judas," but that seemed too Biblical, and had more baggage attached to it than I wanted; Jude was similar and accomplished what I wanted, so I settled on that for my hero's first name.
But what about "Allman"? Ah, well, I suppose I did get a bit heavy-handed with that one. In fact, throughout the editing process, I kept expecting Dave, my editor, to come back and say, "Hey, can't we change his last name to something a little less obvious?" No one ever said anything though, so perhaps it was one of those things that slipped under the radar precisely because it was obvious.
I wanted Jude, of course, to be an Everyman of sorts. He's just an average schlump of a guy--a janitor, of all things. At the same time, though, he has a wondrous power: he's come back from the dead. That, to me, represents all of humanity on some level: we're terrestrial creatures, but there's a spark of the divine inside all of us. We are all Everyman, if you will, but inside us is something magical and special.
So there you have it. Jude's last name is Allman because he represents, on some level, all men (and women).