For my first character spotlight, it only made sense to start with the story’s protagonist: the aloof, but lovable, Linda Pumpernickel. Linda is one of the few human characters in Out of Tune, but she is far from ordinary. A retired English teacher who never married or had children, she spends her days watching soap operas, drinking tea, and sewing costumes for her show choir, ironically named The Baffin Babes (the youngest member is a youthful 55-years-old). Tuesday night rehearsals are all that Linda looks forward to each week, but she’s starting to suspect that even her choir friends are growing frustrated with her. She has been getting more forgetful lately, it takes her longer than most to learn new songs and choreo, and she has been spending more and more time in Linda Land --her her vivid imaginary world. Although she had a fulfilling career teaching English abroad to alien citizens on foreign planets, she has been lacking a sense of purpose since retirement.
Early on in the story, Linda makes a startling discovery. Everything her Aunt Norma had been mumbling about is true: the universe is in grave danger of a cosmic climate meltdown. The nurses at Norma’s retirement home had chalked it up to dementia, but Linda knows that Aunt Norma had been an environmental activist in her youth. She had no idea, however, how integral Norma was to the movement until an unexpected alien visitor crashes into her home and explains everything. Linda soon finds herself in a position to carry on Aunt Norma’s work with a clandestine organization known as the Protectors of the Universal Environment. What the PUE doesn’t know is that just because she is Norma’s closest living relative does not mean that Linda is qualified for the job. Hilarity ensues as Linda battles her own mind to stay present in reality and avoid slipping off into Linda Land. The fate of the universe depends on it.
Linda’s character does, at times, fall into a confused or incapable senior trope, similar to Mr. Magoo. She often relies on her companions, much like how Inspector Gadget relies on his niece, Penny, who does all of the work to solve cases, but receives none of the credit. A similar relationship is shared by Linda and her alien companion, Larv. As the story unfolds, however, readers will find that perhaps there is more to Linda than they originally gave her credit for.
Now, I know what you’re thinking and the answer is yes, Linda was inspired by a real person. Have you ever taken a college or university course and there was that one older person in the class? The token senior? Like Chevy Chase’s character in Community? Linda was that person (yes, Linda was her actual name). Back in 2015, I took a TESL course for teaching English as a second language. I went into it thinking that most of my classmates would be recent university grads like myself, planning to travel abroad to teach English to pay off student debt (and let’s be honest, it was the only way I could afford to travel). I was surprised to see that there was a woman I estimated to be in her sixties or seventies taking the course. She was a former school teacher who had decided she wanted to teach ESL in her retirement. Hey, why not? The thing about Linda was that she fully embodied the phrase, “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” I’m not saying this is the case for everyone, but it certainly was for Linda. She was the kind of student who would space out and ask the instructor a question immediately after he had just explained the answer, or she would start rambling about something completely off topic while the rest of us rolled our eyes and looked at each other knowingly. As aggravating as it sometimes was to be in class with Linda, she really was a lovely person and I think we all secretly admired her for undertaking such an endeavor at her stage in life. Our final assignment was to prepare a lesson and teach it to the class. When it was Linda’s turn, I mentally prepared myself for the vicarious embarrassment I would feel when she inevitably crashed and burned. But to my surprise, she nailed it. Ole Linda pulled through and caught us all off guard with a rather engaging lesson about coffee, and the unintentional lesson that we shouldn’t underestimate a senior. I’m hoping my fictional Linda will teach readers a similar lesson (although she much prefers tea to coffee).
You may have noticed that Linda Pumpernickel is a retired teacher and D.C. Greschner is a teacher, and you may be wondering if there are any other autobiographical aspects to Linda. There sure are! Linda lives on Baffin Island, which is the huge island that looks like an upside-down dog in the territory of Nunavut in northern Canada. I, too, live on a Canadian island, but I much prefer the temperate climate of Vancouver Island to the cold up north. In Linda’s time (near future), climate change has caused Baffin Island to be even warmer than present-day Vancouver Island. Like Linda, I love to sing and have been in several different choirs. Linda’s show choir, The Baffin Babes, is based on the Sweet Adelines Barbershop Choruses I used to sing with. Like Linda, I love tea and have a vivid imagination. Is Linda perhaps a prophecy of what I’ll be like in thirty years? Only time will tell, but it is entirely possible that I’m already well on my way. I did just injure myself playing pickleball, after all.
To learn more about Linda, click here to read the excerpt from Out of Tune where she is first introduced.
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