Email from Mom saying they were driving down to visit prompted us to run around like headless chickens and CLEAN CLEAN CLEAN. The second bedroom is Almost Under Control now. Almost. The house in general looks pretty decent. And it only took an hour. :)
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
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.
5. Which five fictional characters would you shag?
1. Methos
2. Methos
3. Meth
*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
suuuurrrreeee, start posting over here again after I decide you’ve given it up forever….
*g*
OOhhh.. Gerald Tarrant…. That’s a GOOD one (as long as you could ensure you wouldn’t end up like his family).
Is Americorps related to the Peace Corps? A quick glance at the website suggests that they are, but do only internal USA stuff.
I am obviously very ignorant, because of your potential shag-ees the only one with whom I am familiar is Spike! (And I assume you do mean Spike as in Buffy.) Who are the others?
Yes, I know what you mean. The old running around like a headless chicken. Use to go thru that whenever my mother-in-law was coming over.
With regards to your list I agree with Methos, but what about Duncan?
Don’t know if you read J.D. Robb but Roarke sounds reallllllly interesting. Joyce
I donno, it might be worth it. :)
*nods* The advantage to Americorps over the PeaceCorps is that I gather these days you have to have actually useful skills, a degree or experience in the field you want to go help in for Peacecorps.
*laugh* You know, I started out with an explanation of who all those shag-ees were, and then thought, “Ah, people’ll know ’em.” That’ll teach me to think. *grin*
Methos is the oldest (living, possibly ever) Immortal in the Highlander television series. I have a theory about the Immortals: I believe that they are essentially what they were when their mortal lives ended and they became Immortal. Hence, Connor from the movies is a warrior; Duncan from the tv series is a chieftain’s son and a hero. Amanda, also from the tv series, is a thief. Methos, who died five thousand or more years ago, is a survivor, because that’s what you *did* five millennia ago. He will do anything to survive, making him deliciously and unrepentently grey. I adore that. (He is also played by Peter Wingfield, who happens to be physically exactly what God would have provided me if I’d made up a a checklist of attributes of a perfect male specimen according to my tastes. Except God, being somewhat cooler than I am, thought up giving the guy changeable eyes: they go from very pale hazel to black in the right lighting. *falls over*)
Gerald Tarrant is the…antagonist, though not the bad guy, in C.S. Friedman’s Coldfire Trilogy. The first book, BLACK SUN RISING, is one of my desert island books, and the whole trilogy is very very good. Tarrant is the most amoral, complex, driven, understandable, focused, dedicated, honor-bound antagonist I have ever read, and I would give my left arm to write a character as awesome as he is. See: shades of grey, from above. :)
Vincent is the Beast of the late 80s television show Beauty and the Beast, starring Ron Perlman, a phenomenal American actor (who most recently and possibly most famously played Hellboy in the movie), as Vincent, and Linda Hamilton (by *far* most famous for her role as Sarah Connor in the Terminator movies) as Beauty. Vincent was … man. The ultimate protector. Gentle and violent by turns, the consummate hero, capable of both whispering poetry to life and rendering high unholy terror unto the bad guys. Aside from the sheer sexiness of the lion/beast makeup (which was really very good and really very raar), Ron Perlman brought this incredible soft *voice* to the character that just turns a girl’s knees to goo. Perlman/Vincent is responsible for my love of poetry and for coming around to liking my full first name, which is Catherine, and which was the name of Linda Hamilton’s character. I don’t like being called Catherine, but I would never want Ron Perlman to call me anything but. :)
(By this time you may be sorry you asked for clarification.)
Gambit and Wolverine are X-Men, the latter played unexpectedly well by Hugh Jackman in the films. Gambit’s a thief, a liar and a charmer whose mutant power is to blow things up, and Wolverine’s healing factor renders him effectively immortal and allows him to slice and dice his way through bad guys thanks to adamantium claws. They’re both better people than they pretend to be/think they are, perhaps more especially in Wolverine’s case, because he holds himself to an impossible standard, but they’ve both got a lot of darkness in them, and once more, see above for shades of grey. :)
You assume correctly with Spike as in Buffy, and if you’ve managed to work your way through all of what I’ve written above, you can probably figure out why I like him. *grin*
Duncan’s too heroic. I’m not that interested in the heroes. It’s the shady people around them I like.
I’ve only read one or two J.D. Robb books., I’m afraid, so I don’t remember Roarke that well. He apparently didn’t turn my crank the way some of these guys do. :)
I finally managed to get my main site and the LJ to look enough like each other to embed the latter into the former. I’d been trying for months. I now have ALL my comments and conversations in one place, which is very, very helpful. So yeah, I’ve been using the LJ for about a month now. :)
Who is Gerrald Tarrant?