I seem to have defeated the cold. Yay! Oh, and the bread is rising; I think I'd been using too much salt. Duh. Either that or it's gotten over it being Passover... (Ted said, "This is a Catholic country." I said, "Maybe the yeast isn't Catholic!")
What else do I know? Not very much, really. Therefore, it's more interview questions! This time from
nwhyte, 1. Do you know David Marusek, author of Counting Heads) at all? (Of course, I naturally assume that everybody who has ever lived in Fairbanks, Alaska, knows everybody else who lived there at the same time.)
People naturally assume that about the entire state. *grin* Sadly, though, I do not know him at all, except for a very vague familiarity with the name.
2. Which is your favourite of your own books (and/or which should I read first)?
My favorite of my own books, RIGHT ANGLES TO FAERYLAND, has not yet been published. Or even bought. :) If it had been, I would recommend it, but I think I'll have to just go with URBAN SHAMAN, which is my first published novel and is about a Seattle cop with no use for the mystical. When she has a near-death experience and is offered a choice between life as a shaman or dying, she chooses life, finds herself neck-deep in a murder mystery and up against a couple of old Celtic gods, and doesn't handle it very well. :)
3. If you could sit down with your 17-year-old self and give her some advice, what would it be?
That's one of those questions I always have a hard time with, 'cause I'm happy with where I am right now, and presumably if I talked to my 17 year old self and *took* my own advice, I'd be somewhere *else* now. Regardless:
I graduated high school at 16 and was in college at 17, my birthday being at the beginning of June. If I could get to me on my 17th birthday, I'd tell me to take a year off between high school and college and go do something like AmeriCorps, both for the experience of it and for the maturity time.
I would also tell me not to be such a screw-off in college, though I think if I took my first advice there'd be less chance of that. I would tell me that it's easy to fail by not trying (which is what I did), but that there was no reason for me to worry about failing, because I was perfectly capable. It took an embarrassingly long time to get over that afraid-to-try-for-fear-of-failure thing (by which I mean I was, I don't know, 23 or so by the time I did), and that I'd probably have had more fun if I hadn't worked myself up over small things.
Also, if I hadn't screwed around, I could've graduated before I turned 21, which would've been cool. :)
4. Like you, I am a big fan of Eleanor of Aquitaine. Would you ever put her in one of your books? (Indeed, have you perhaps already done so?)
I have not yet done so, though I'd love to someday write a book about, or featuring, her. Odds are better that I'll find myself using her as an archetype in a historical fantasy, writing a character based on her rather than trying to write Eleanor herself.
dancinghorse (Judith Tarr) pulls off a very good historical fantasy setting in her THE DEVIL'S BARGAIN, which actually uses Eleanor as a character (though an off-screen one, to the best of my recollection), but I tend to find more freedom in renaming people and using events from their lives as starting points for fantasy-based characters.5. Which five fictional characters would you shag?
1. Methos
2.
3.
*ahem*
1. Methos
2. Gerald Tarrant
3. Vincent (Although if I could just get Ron Perlman to say my full name, frankly, that would do. My God.)
4. Gambit. Or Wolverine. Can't decide. Hell, Gambit and Wolverine. I'm easy.
5. Spike
