Welcome fellow GUTGAA-ians.
Since we all have tons of blogs to visit, I’ll get straight to my official bio.
I’d love to say I spent my childhood in intellectual pursuits. The truth is I was fonder of exploring abandoned houses and old cemeteries-or of slogging around in swamps, calling birds and studying wild plants. When stuck indoors, I was likely to be found brewing up a concoction from plants I’d harvested in the woods or huddled over a paperback gothic novel that I’d smuggled into the house. Over the years, I slowly migrated from the Berkshires in Massachusetts to Northern Vermont. I can now be found in my 1830’s country store, arranging flowers and selling funky collectables and antiques (and writing).
I write YA, both contemporary and historical-with a touch of romance and most often a large dash of fantasy. My short stories have appeared in a number of venues, including Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show and Wildside Press’ Cat Tales. I also write quarterly articles for Vermont Bride Magazine.
Where do you write? My main writing space is a corner in my bedroom.
This would be to my left. Crap, I probably should have made my bed.
To my right are notes, some crystals and stones, a little dragon a CP gave me. Oh, yeah--and the bee coin and a terracotta oil lamp my sister got for me in Greece. She claims they came out of a cursed excavation site. The face on the oil lamp is supposedly a likeness of Medusa. Both the lamp and coin appear in my YA gothic, MOONHILL.
Favorite time to write? My favorite time would be Sunday morning. But a majority of my BIC time is weekday evenings.
Drink of choice while writing? Tea or coffee-hot or iced.
When writing, do you listen to music or do you need complete silence? Silence. Once in awhile I’ll listen to something funky, but I find lyrics distracting. I do like to have the windows open, so I can hear the river behind my house and the birds singing.
What was your inspiration for your latest manuscript and where did you find it?
Jonny Depp. Seriously. I was trying to decide what to write next, when I read that Jonny Depp was working on a remake of the old Dark Shadows TV show. I love gothic novels and I thought the genre would play to my writing strengths, so I decided to follow Jonny’s lead-though my story isn’t campy like the remake and doesn’t involve vampires.
Soon after that, the main character, a scene and this sentence came to me: I bowed my head and watched the outgoing tide swallow my mother, bits of gray washing over a starfish, over stones and shells, waves urging her into the arms of seaweed.
What's your most valuable writing tip? Hmmmm. I don’t think there’s a single most valuable. Oh, maybe there is DON’T LISTEN TO THE HEAD MONKEYS. Seriously, I’ve probably given and taken this advice more than anything else.
Thanks for stopping by. Follow my blog or Twitter @PatEsden and I will follow back.
This is a blog hop. Unfortunately, the linky isn't working for me. But here's a link back to Deana Barnhart’s blog. http://deanabarnhart.blogspot.com/