New Lenox Novelist Latest Book Out In October

NEW LENOX, IL — What if your past life wasn’t over? That’s the question for readers of “Nothing Else is Love,” a novel written by New Lenox resident Gina Linko, who grew up in Joliet but has called New Lenox home for the past 18 years.

The novel is Linko’s 10th book, though “Nothing Else is Love” is her first work to be published for adults.

The novel takes readers on a journey where the characters are connected — or reconnected — through time and space, and an ocean apart, blurring the lines between the here-and-now and the past.

Linko spoke with Patch about “Nothing Else is Love” and her writing process. The following is a Q&A with Linko, lightly edited for clarity and length.

PATCH: Congratulations on the book. I was reading some of the excerpts and it sounds very interesting. Can you tell us how you came up with the idea for the book?

Linko: Usually I’ll get an idea, a little spur of an idea, and let it ruminate. And then I get another idea, and then I marry them together, somehow. But, lots of times I like to say that my best ideas, or the ones that I love and kind of run with, exist in that gray area where science sort of ends and pseudo-science begins. Something that seems impossible but not quite unexplainable.

So, the idea of a past life intrigued me very much. I have this character (Alice Grier) who believes she had a past life, and what would that look like as she grew up and lived with this knowledge. And that’s where that part of the story came from.

It’s a dual narrative. So, there’s another half of this story that is Rune Folkeson’s immigration to the United States back in the 1920s. And that comes a lot from my grandparents, who were Swedish immigrants. I was reading letters that my mom had written when she was a little girl and traveled to Sweden on a big ship, and the cool details that she loved as a kid, like the tiny wrapped cakes of soap that they had, and the different kids of the potatoes they had to eat in the ship’s galley. So, that really interested me and, well, they’re married together in this story.

PATCH: For this novel, you kind of patched some things together, played with some different ideas. Is that the normal process for you in your previous novels?

Linko: It is. I used to be a science teacher. I taught science and language arts when I was first out of college. And, so, I really like scientific questions. I would say not exactly the paranormal, but stuff that is in that gray area. So, lots of times I will get ideas from that, and like, “What if this could be real, and it just isn’t explained by science yet?”

But, I wouldn’t call what I’m writing science-fiction because really I’m writing human stories of — I like to say “Nothing Else is Love” is a romance. But it’s also a family saga, it’s a mystery, it’s a lot of different things. That is how my writing usually starts: with an idea and then maybe I’ll start to imagine a character who is dealing with that idea. And then I will sit with that for a long time, and my imagination will just go and marry it to a different idea here and there.

I guess because [the novel] is for adults — I’ve written for kids in the past; this is my first adult book — it is so complicated. It shifts viewpoints and timelines, and it really sort of pushed the edge of my writing ability. It took me forever to write, and even longer to revise and get it just right because, I think, there is just so much going on in the book.

PATCH: How do you keep all of the characters and their journeys across different times straight?

Linko: My kids will sort of laugh at me because I’ll have these big poster boards or pieces of paper where I’ll draw a story arc — just like what you would learn in middle school with the rising action, the climax, etcetera — and I will plan out the bare bones of each character’s arc ahead of time. I always know ahead of time where I’m going with things, although it will change. It’s never exactly how I plan it, but I do have to know where I’m going. I have to keep really good notes on stuff because not only are there timeline changes and voice changes, there are also secrets that some characters know and some characters don’t even realize that they’re keeping from themselves. It’s a complicated process.

PATCH: Do you ever come to a point where you are surprised at the direction the story and the characters are taking?

Linko: All the time. Especially when you get into it, the characters take on a life of their own. They’re always living in my head, so I will write myself to a point and then I’ll realize what’s really supposed to happen. It’s not what I thought, but the character is leading the way.

I think you have to stay true to your characters: They will show you what their story was, what their story is. That’s one of the most fun times as a writer, when you have set up all of this stuff — the plot, the setting, the characters, their backstory — and then you get to some really important point and you’re surprised with, “Oh, this is what’s going to happen.” So, yeah, that is pretty exciting.

PATCH: You mentioned that this was your first time writing for adults. What inspired you to go in that direction this time?

Linko: I don’t really know. I think I started writing this thinking maybe that Alice was a teenager, and I quickly realized that wasn’t going to work. Her story begins, really, at the crucial point when she’s a young adult. And I think the characters led the way; this is where her story starts to unravel. So, it pushed it into the adult genre. And then it gives me a little leadway and challenges me as a writer to write in this different genre.

I don’t know if it’s easier or harder. It’s just different because you can do some things that you can’t do when writing for kids. But, also, kids are along for the ride. They like when things are a little bit — they accept those little nuances that there might be some magical realism in the world. They’re not as cynical. So, it goes both ways.

Linko’s novel, “Nothing Else is Love,” will be out Oct. 12 and will be published by TouchPoint Press.

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