My good friend RLL is participating in an exciting event called READ TUESDAY, which is taking place today, December 10th. Basically, this event is a HUGE SALE on our favorite thing: BOOKS! Go ahead and click on the image above to be taken to the READ TUESDAY site. You don’t want to miss out on this HUGE EVENT!
In honor of the event, RLL has been circling blogs, answering some very personal questions in that alluring Scottish accent of his. And while I haven’t had time to reciprocate and answer these questions myself (yet…*cough* work *cough* Nano *cough* winterguard *cough* Christmas), I’m happy to host him on my blog. And let’s be honest, since Antithesis came out, I’ve kind of gone into radio silence (*cough* Nano), it’s something I plan on working on in the near future…if I have time.
So here’s RLL. Feel free to read the following in your BEST Scottish accent. And be sure to check out READ TUESDAY and RLL’s sale books (they’re FREE today!): Neon Gods Brought Down by Swords and WITCHES.
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In support of READ TUESDAY, I’ve been answering twenty questions on other people’s blogs. Writers chatting to each other on writing. I’ve given different answers to my own questions here:
The next set of answers will go up here shortly: E.B. BLACK.
READ TUESDAY is a winter book sale taking place on the 10th of December 2013 – the inaugural sale. Get out there and find some bargains on the day. Spread the joy of reading and writing.
Time for some alternative answers…where possible. It’s getting tougher to answer these same questions…
1. Fire rages in your house. Everyone is safe, but you. You decide to smash through the window, shielding your face with a book. What is the book?
Unreliable Memoirs, by Clive James. If you are going to die, die laughing.
2. Asleep in your rebuilt house, you dream of meeting a dead author. But not in a creepy stalkerish way, so you shoo Mr Poe out of the kitchen. Instead, you sit down and have cake with which dead author?
Rather unsporting of me I know, but I feel like naming a writer yet-living – just to move that writer over to the dead list for the purposes of this answer. And then I’d have words.
3. Would you name six essential items for writers? If, you know, cornered and threatened with torture.
In no particular order. A weak floor. Untied shoelace. Shark in a bathtub. A pen, filched from my breast-pocket and held in my mouth. That old stand-by, a blown fuse. A woman with acute hearing.
As the torturer enters the room, the fuse blows. I spy my chance and expel the pen from my mouth. It clatters to the edge of the weak floor. My torturer slips on the pen and then trips on his untied shoelace. The torturer’s impact with the weak-spot sends him falling into the waiting bathtub.
A woman with acute hearing notices the crash and that scream, and it is she who rushed to my rescue. Shark and bathtub constitute one item for the purposes of this narrative. The water is thrown in, free.
4. Who’d win in a fight between Count Dracula and Frankenstein’s monster? If, you know, you were writing that scene.
Fiction is the real winner here. That’s a rubbish answer. Hulk SMASH!
5. It’s the end of a long and tiring day. You are still writing a scene. Do you see it through to the end, even though matchsticks prop your eyelids open, or do you sleep on it and return, refreshed, to slay that literary dragon another day?
I press the big red button that does all my writing.
6. You must introduce a plot-twist. Evil twin or luggage mix-up?
My plot-twist is…that there is no plot-twist. People speak of it for years.
7. Let’s say you write a bunch of books featuring an amazing recurring villain. At the end of your latest story you have definitely absitively posolutely killed off the villain for all time and then some. Did you pepper your narrative with clues hinting at the chance of a villainous return in the next book?
Given that the villain succeeds in destroying existence…
8. You are at sea in a lifeboat, with the barest chance of surviving the raging storm. There’s one opportunity to save a character, drifting by this scene. Do you save the idealistic hero or the tragic villain?
In an appalling mix-up, I save the idealistic tragic.
9. It’s time to kill a much-loved character – that pesky plot intrudes. Do you just type it up, heartlessly, or are there any strange rituals to be performed before the deed is done?
Spaghetti, always the spaghetti. I feel that’s twice I’ve used this answer. Raspberry sauce, always the raspberry sauce…
10. Embarrassing typo time. I’m always typing thongs instead of things. One day, that’ll land me in trouble. Care to share any wildly embarrassing typing anecdotes? If, you know, the wrong word suddenly made something so much funnier. (My last crime against typing lay in omitting the u from Superman.)
Another bogus question – presumably, we type ALONE and somehow KILL the typo before that witty error reaches the pubic.
11. I’ve fallen out of my chair laughing at all sorts of thongs I’ve typed. Have you?
Well, it’s saner than falling out of a thong laughing at all sorts of chairs I’ve typed.
12. You take a classic literary work and update it by throwing in rocket ships. Dare you name that story? Pride and Prejudice on Mars. That kind of thing.
Double Indemnity: The Clone Wars.
13. Seen the movie. Read the book. And your preference was for?
Brunettes over redheads and redheads over blondes. That’s not a recipe for an orgy.
14. Occupational hazard of being a writer. Has a book ever fallen on your head? This may occasionally happen to non-writers, it must be said.
I once saw a book stalk and kill a tiger in the foothills of Fictionlandia.
15. Did you ever read a series of books out of sequence?
I read a book facing the wrong way. That came back to haunt me.
16. You encounter a story just as you are writing the same type of tale. Do you abandon your work, or keep going with the other one to ensure there won’t be endless similarities?
I’ve answered this question too often and need to lie down. Think I got away with that. Oh. Have I used this excuse twice? Damn.
17. Have you ever stumbled across a Much-Loved Children’s Classic™ that you’ve never heard of?
That unpronounceable story. If I could say it, I’d know how to spell it. No, I’ll give a proper answer. There’s that Harry Potter book sitting on my shelf, unread. You know the one. Hanging in Judgement: Religion and the Death Penalty in England from the Bloody Code to Abolition. By the Reverend Harry Potter.
18. You build a secret passage into your story. Where?
On top of spaghetti, all covered with cheese.
19. Facing the prospect of writing erotica, you decide on a racy pen-name. And that would be…
Margarine Loube.
20. On a train a fan praises your work, mistaking you for another author. What happens next?
I spend twenty minutes discussing his favourite book – a treatise on stained-glass windows – about which I skilfully ad-lib. He leaves the train none-the-wiser. My knowledge-base is increased.
Here’s a blog post on READ TUESDAY. And here’s a funny one on CONTACTING PEOPLE FOR READ TUESDAY.
Featured in the READ TUESDAY sale on December the 10th, 2013 – Neon Gods Brought Down by Swords and WITCHES. Both will be free on the day. Pick up copies and READ them – please don’t just store endless free books on an electronic device. If you want to support me or any of the writers mentioned above, please leave reviews. We appreciate the effort made, whether one-star or five-star.
Note that Margo Bond Collins won’t have a sale on the day, but she will run a December sale. R.B. Austin and E.B. Black couldn’t make the sale day either – but check out their books anyway. And Papizilla hopes to publish one day. Thanks for your time.
@RLL_author.
Signpost blog, RLL AUTHOR.
Blog, REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE. (THOUGHTS ON PUBLISHING BY AN AUTHOR ON THE RUN.)
Kacey Vanderkarr 