Hudson Library pics and GCC
Yesterday, the Hudson Library hosted a local author event. My son came with me, hence the artistic Bakugan with Books shot in the center of the pictures above. In fact, I asked him for his opinion on my outfit as I was getting ready, and he and his bakugan offered suggestions. "Oh, do bakugan know about fashion?" I asked him. "Mom, don't you watch with me, they're all about strategy." So there it is, strategic fasion. From the mouths of babes...er, bakugan. Unfortunately, I didn't get pictures from around the entire room, but Ty gets photo credit for the one of me. Bakugan with Books and the accompanying pic of fellow author Susan Noe Harmon with her book UNDER THE WEEPING WILLOW are mine.
Next week I'm going to be all over the blogosphere doing Girlfriend's Cyber Circuit interviews. My blog will have wonderful historical romance guest posts. To kick off my GCC tour, I decided to answer my own questions below.
Interview with a Vampire(writer)
How many fingers would you use to count the books you've read more than three times? What books do you turn to time and again and why?
Let’s see? The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare, The Mirror of Her Dreams and The Man Rides Through by Stephen R. Donaldson, The Changeover by Margaret Mahy, Watcher in the Woods by Florence Engel Randall… Interesting that three out of five of these are young adult. Why? I think it’s because these are very elementally novels about characters that speak to me.
Have you ever fallen in love with a character (yours or someone else's)? How did that work out for you?
I’ve fallen in love with so many characters. I think my very first imaginary love was Jace from Jace and the Wheeled Warriors, a cartoon from when I was a kid. Since then, my loves have evolved generally into swashbuckling heroes or those who aren’t too proud to appear dim if it suits their higher purpose (like the Countess D’Orzy’s Scarlet Pimpernel or Melanie Rawn’s Rohan from the Dragon Prince series). I also adore Lynn Flewelling’s Seregil, Carol Berg’s Seyonne, and Nathaniel from The Witch of Blackbird Pond, after whom my son was almost named.
Was there a pivotal moment in your writing or a single (or plural) epiphany that really changed or improved the way you write?
Those of you who know suricattus know that she’s one tough cookie. I’ve never been comfortable with emotion, not with expressing it anyway. I was taught growing up that emotion was weakness. Anger seemed to be the only exception to that rule. Thus, the characters I wrote were all untouched by emotion. They held themselves back. I respected that, respected them, but it didn’t exactly do wonders for my writing. The epiphany for me came when she challenged me to tap into my emotions and to try writing a character who was actually in touch with hers. I fought against it kicking and screaming, but in the end she was right and my fiction was stronger for it. (You hear that, LAG, you got it in writing (*grin).)
I don't think any character really lives and breathes without quirks. Can you talk about that?
Absolutely! I did a paper on this way back in high school because I was/am a huge Sherlock Holmes fanatic, and it always amazed me that a man who prided himself so much on ordered reasoning would take to drugs when there was no case to interest him. I don’t think anyone who actually lives and breathes, as good characters do, comes without their seeming inconsistencies, their quirks, weaknesses, strengths, insecurities…all of these things go into making us, or our characters, who we/they are.
Do you ever fear that people you've known will read your work and see themselves in the characters you create?
My characters are generally a conglomeration of people I’ve known, never just one. It’s funny, because friends reading my first pseudonymous novel, Playing Nice, commented that the heroine, Jesse, reminded them of me, and I just had to laugh. She’s actually a composite of my two best friends, both of whom were way smarter about men than I was!
If you could meet any fictional character ever created, who would it be and why?
You know those beloved characters I mentioned above? I’d love to meet any one of them. Or maybe…you know, Maggie Quinn from Rosemary Clement-Moore’s Maggie Quinn: Girl vs. Evil series is so wonderfully snarky. I bet we could have some fun. If I were cool enough to keep up. Oooh, or Rachel Caine’s Weather Warden Joanne Baldwin. The two of us loose in a mall…talk about economic stimulus!