Christopher Barzak – Trampoline Interview

Wed 1 Jul 2009 - Filed under: Authors| Posted by: Gavin

Trampoline: an interview

Christopher Barzak (Dead Boy Found)

What’s your favorite cocktail?

The sort that people buy for me.

Which of the seven deadly sins is your favorite these days?

I’ve been favoring sloth myself, but sloth doesn’t favor me.

What’s your favorite rule of thumb?

Forget about the possibility of it ever being green.

So, come out with it, already — you really believe in alien abductions. Don’t you? All sci-fi writers do…right?

Are you implying something here?

What is the writer’s role in inhabiting the commercial spaces of publishing?

Curl into a fetal position and begin sucking your thumb.

Who’s been eating my porridge?

Not me. I’m a toast man.

Where have all the flowers gone?

To all the little capitalist flower shops.

Who cleft the Devil’s foot?

That’s a personal matter, I’d imagine.

Does she or doesn’t she?

She does. Quite often, actually. And she’s good at it, too.

Did he ever return?

Eventually he returned, though changed of course, as these events would change anyone. I myself wonder if, by returning, his life has come full circle and will begin again, but one can only hope.

What has it got in its pocketses?

Broken fortune cookies.

How far is it to Babylon?

I’m not good at measuring, but I can give directions. Take 680 out to Mahoning Avenue. Turn right off the exit ramp, then turn left at the first light. You’ll be driving down a long driveway, and then suddenly a large building — you can’t miss it, it’s decked out in neon palm tree signs — will appear in the darkness. Have ten dollars, or you won’t be admitted.

Can I get there by candlelight?

I suppose you could, although that’s awfully dramatic, don’t you think?

“Where is last year’s snow?”

The snow monkeys ate it all.

Why is a raven like a writing desk?

I give up. Why?

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Only if you buy me a cocktail first.

Can this cockpit hold The vasty fields of France? Or may we cram Within this wooden O the very casques That did affright the air at Agincourt?

Get cramming.

Can you call spirits from the vasty deep? Will they come when you do call for them?

I can’t call spirits from the vasty deep. I have better luck with spirits from the surfacey shallows. They come when anyone calls, though they’re hard to get rid of.

What have you done with Dr. Millmoss?

Nothing. I swear!

Where is fancy bred?

In Europe, I think. Oh wait. That’s fancy bread. Fancy is bred in small quiet moments, in the interstices of interactions.

Best trampoline story you know (or, in lieu of story, rules for best trampoline game you’ve played).

When I was in elementary school, the gym teacher would sometimes have this really huge trampoline that an entire class of kids could fit on. We could line up on around its perimeter and she would have us all jump up and down while singing a round of Row, Row, Row Your Boat. The first of us would start the song and jump, and when that person landed, the next one would jump up and start singing. And we’d all be going like pistons at a certain point, singing Row, Row, Row Your Boat, and there’s no real story to this, no beginning or end, only a moment where it felt like I was part of something really magical.

What’s the most favorable sort of weather for your creative process?

Heavy weather.

When’s the last time you changed your mind about something? I think I mean a radical shift of personal values — regarding art (“Suddenly, I’m not crazy about Billie Holiday, in fact, I’m not even sure I’m spelling her name right”), regarding anything (“Actually, you can go home again”).

Regarding art, I had a radical shift in values probably last year, when I realized I could do anything I wanted in art, as long as I made it work. Regarding anything, or life in general, I had a radical shift in values about a year ago also, when I realized I could do anything I wanted, as long as I made it work.

Did you ever go to a really low rent amusement park that had trampolines stretched over shallow pits and bounce and bounce and bounce and get really confident and start bouncing from one trampoline to the next but then kind of lose it and bounce in to your cousin Jeff and cause him to fall into a split timber fence and knock out one of his teeth? Did you ever do that?

Those places are outlawed in Ohio, and my cousin Jeff still has all his teeth, as far as I know.

What can we, as a group, do to increase the popularity of multi-stage bicycle racing as a spectator sport in America?

We could throw parties and give out pencils with the website for the Society for multi-stage bicycle racing as a spectator sport in America printed on them.

I once had a creative writing teacher tell me that he didn’t understand why authors used science fiction or magical realism to tell a story or impart a theme. Why do you think we do, when good old realism might do the trick?

Even if realism might do the trick, sometimes how you impart a theme or tell a story is as important as what the theme is.

Have you found that during the Reagan-Bush-Bush-Quayle-Bush-Cheney era the quality of your writing has gotten a little dodgier?

Not so much dodgier as filled with a sense of dread.

What is the meaning of life?

A reviewer once criticized a story of mine for raising this question and not answering it. I’m still not answering. Unless you buy me a cocktail.

Can you say something, particularly in light of these grave times, about the writer’s role or responsibility in the creation of work that is purely literary, that is the work of the imagination, as opposed to work that serves more overtly and diras a voice of conscience?

I think that writing can be purely literary and still serve overtly and directly as a voice of conscience. And I think that writers, like anyone else, have a choice in how they make their work. I myself think we need writing that is purely literary, writing that is purely a voice of conscience, and writing that is both literary and a voice of conscience. We need the purely literary as a form of healing for our imaginations. We need the voices of conscience as a form of healing and direction for our cultures. We need writing that is both purely literary and a voice of conscience that bridges reconnects our conscience beings with our imaginations, so that we can begin making the world over again, for the better, I hope.

Gertrude Stein said: “I have destroyed sentences and rhythms and literary overtones and all the rest of that nonsense, to get to the very core of this problem of communication of intuition.” The relationship of form to content. Form as it facilitates communication, particularly communication of the remote, of the mysterious. Form as it permits the dramatization of states of mind. As it serves to make comprehensible the incomprehensible. What are your views on this subject?

It’s important to allow new forms to arise out of states of mind, to allow for new, possibly remote, possibly mysterious, or perhaps necessarily remote and mysterious ideas or feelings to come into being. With each new name, the world becomes a bit more complicated, and in that complication, a bit easier to understand each other.

O

Next — Richard Butner

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Dave Shaw – Trampoline Interview

Wed 1 Jul 2009 - Filed under: Authors| Posted by: Gavin

Trampoline: an interview

What’s your favorite cocktail?

Golden-laced Wyandotte roosters have striking plumage, but not too striking. It’s not overdone, you know, like the tails on White Leghorns. Unless I’ve misunderstood the question. Then it’s whatever W’s drinking.

Which of the seven deadly sins is your favorite these days?

In honor of the War on Terror (and Other Abstract Concepts), my favorite of the Seven Deadly Sins is Justice.

What’s your favorite rule of thumb?

In W’s words: Ignorance Is Strength.

Do you have any pets? How many? And if so, how do they affect your writing (if at all)?

We have five cats and a half-dozen birds. I write in shorter sentences than I used to. The birds are all pro-war. The cats are too smart for the rhetoric.

So, come out with it, already — you really believe in alien abductions. Don’t you? All sci-fi writers do…right?

How can you not believe in alien abductions? Or, more specifically, in alien abductions and replacements, as in the case of the current President of the United Now-Completely-Safe-&-Terror-free States?

What is the writer’s role in inhabiting the commercial spaces of publishing?

Never ever sell out. Ever. Especially if you can maintain your integrity while drinking a nice cool beverage like Coke, driving your Ford, and cruising around on good old fashioned American-made Exxon unleaded. Did you know that Exxon averages only one habitat-obliterating oil spill for every Persian Gulf War they underwrite?

Who’s been eating my porridge?

Sadam Hussein. Don’t you watch the White House briefings?

Who cleft the Devil’s foot?

Good question. Donne right? I prefer his famous:

“Who smokes crack in the White House, in back?”

Where is the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing?

Where is the subject-verb agreement in the first question? I believe the cavalier idiot who’s asking for whom the trumpet toots is running for reelection in 2004.

What immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry?

John Ashcroft’s fearful hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry with a load of wiretaps and surveillance. He knows you’re reading this right now, by the way. I bet you’ll vote twice next time, won’t you, if martial law is ever lifted.

What has it got in its pocketses?

My Colin Powell crucifix. My Fox News War Ticker text imager. My duct tape. My color guide to Terror Alert Codes. My Republican get-out-of-jail-free card. My “All Animals Are Equal, But Some ARE More Equal Than Others” Bush in 2004 stickers.

What rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?

Yeats, right? Okay, enough with the poetry quiz. Donne, Blake, etc etc. Enough is enough.

What has it got in its ‘pocalypse?

Stumped. Milton? Joyce? Shakespeare? Chaucer? Ari Fliescher?

How far is it to Babylon?

Not far. It’s just ahead, under that giant oil well fire.

Can I get there by candlelight?

If you’re carrying an AK-47 and have a ton of air support.

“Where is last year’s snow?”

Siberia, Antarctica, the Himalayas, the last State of the Union address, or in some other repository for the sickenly sentimental.

Can you call spirits from the vasty deep? Will they come when you do call for them?

I can’t even get my two and a half-year old daughter to come when I call her.

What have you done with Dr. Millmoss?

What have you done with the real questions?

Best trampoline story you know (or, in lieu of story, rules for best trampoline game you’ve played).

I wasn’t allowed on the trampoline when I was a kid because we lived down the street from the Bushes and “Georgie” got a cranberry stuck in his nose and had to go to the hospital and my Mom said that’s not the kind of boy whose trampoline you’re going to play on.

What are your favorite kids’ books? What was your favorite when you were a kid (say, 10)?

“The Bewitched Anthology,” “Dagwood Loves Samantha,” “The Trials of Tabitha,” “Let’s Play Doctor with Dr. Bombay.”

What’s the most favorable sort of weather for your creative process?

Sandstorm of sufficient strength to interfere with bombing Iraqi children.

When’s the last time you changed your mind about something? I think I mean a radical shift of personal values — regarding art (“Suddenly, I’m not crazy about Billie Holiday, in fact, I’m not even sure I’m spelling her name right”), regarding anything (“Actually, you can go home again”).

Well, it’s been suggested to me recently that the Vice President actually is still alive. I’m open to considering it.

What book or books do you press upon friends?

Fixing Daddy’s Big Mistake: How W Only Sacrificed Thousands of Innocent Iraqi Children to Satisfy His Unrequited Homosexual Obsession with Sadam Hussein.

What can we, as a group, do to increase the popularity of multi-stage bicycle racing as a spectator sport in America?

We can demand that all cyclists wear facsimiles of the American flag while racing their courses through, around, and over carefully placed Iraqi little girls, aged two to six. We can play the national anthem throughout, slightly louder when a collateral obstacle gets taken out. Fox News can update fans on the changing status of terror alerts as the stages unfold.

What is the meaning of life?

It’s better to fly planes carrying weapons of mass destruction or be able to order men around who fly planes carrying weapons of mass destruction or to live in a country on whose behalf men fly planes carrying weapons of mass destruction than to (formerly) live underneath planes carrying weapons of mass destruction.

If you could live in a book, which one would it be?

I’d like to live in a satire of the War on Terror and other Abstract Concepts, because, being a satire of the insane, it would, I guess, have to be about a perfectly reasonable, contemplative country full of critically-thinking citizens, governed by caring, thoughtful, and mostly non-substance-abusing democratically-elected statesmen.

Gertrude Stein said: “I have destroyed sentences and rhythms and literary overtones and all the rest of that nonsense, to get to the very core of this problem of communication of intuition.” The relationship of form to content. Form as it facilitates communication, particularly communication of the remote, of the mysterious. Form as it permits the dramatization of states of mind. As it serves to make comprehensible the incomprehensible. What are your views on this subject?

I have to admit that at this point in the exam I’m worried most about whether I’ve exhausted every possible avenue to earmark myself for an FBI file. Some of my friends have them, why can’t I? Frankly, it’s embarrassing having worked for so long for a liberal university and not having caused the FBI to waste tens of thousands of dollars of surveillance on me. Thus far, though, it seems I haven’t provoked anything more than the occasional peeping of my neighbor Gus, who I’ve twice caught on a ladder outside my bathroom window in his French maid’s outfit.

O

Next — Vandana Singh

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Carol Emshwiller – Trampoline Interview

Wed 1 Jul 2009 - Filed under: Authors| Posted by: Gavin

Trampoline: an interview

Carol Emshwiller (Gods and Three Wishes)

Were there any particular writers or stories that influenced the writing of the story that will be appearing in Trampoline? If so, how exactly did they influence the writing of your story?

I don’t think I was influenced by anybody in this story except maybe so long ago I don’t remember. Maybe thirty years ago, my class with Kenneth Koch.

Is your Trampoline story generally representative of the sort of story you usually write? To elaborate: is this story a departure in style or subject matter (or any other sort of departure, for that matter) for you? If so, what was different or new for you in the writing of this story? Do you think it is a new direction for your writing, or simply an experiment?

This story is written in a style I use every now and then when I get tired of writing more “standard” stories. I think maybe every third or fourth story comes out like this.

(More about Carol)

O

Next — Jeffrey Ford

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Beth Adele Long – Trampoline Interview

Wed 1 Jul 2009 - Filed under: Authors| Posted by: Gavin

Trampoline:an interview

Beth Adele Long (Destroyer)

Were there any particular writers or stories that influenced the writing of the story that will be appearing in Trampoline? If so, how exactly did they influence the writing of your story?

Flannery O’Connor’s “Good Country People” provided the overall structure of the story. Thus “Destroyer” began as a writing exercise in which I intended to follow O’Connor’s story scene by scene, but as the story developed, I realized that the set-up I had originally envisioned would have been completely wrong-headed. The structural and even thematic links are still obviously there, but morphed into something quite distinct.

Is your Trampoline story generally representative of the sort of story you usually write? To elaborate: is this story a departure in style or subject matter (or any other sort of departure, for that matter) for you? If so, what was different or new for you in the writing of this story? Do you think it is a new direction for your writing, or simply an experiment?

My writing style seems to have as much direction as a drunken housefly; lots of directions, but none of them consistent or predictable. But this story is representative of my usual sort of story in that I tried to be as true and naked and real as I could manage, which was particularly excruciating in this story.

What’s your favorite cocktail?

Long Island Iced Tea

Which of the seven deadly sins is your favorite these days?

Hmmm…let me get back to you on that one. Still trying them on for size.

What’s your favorite rule of thumb?

No pain, no pain.

So, come out with it, already — you really believe in alien abductions. Don’t you? All sci-fi writers do…right?

What? We’ve been abducting aliens?

Who’s been eating my porridge?

A hippo.

Where have all the flowers gone?

I believe they followed the cowboys.

Does she or doesn’t she?

Whichever she pleases.

Did he ever return?

Yes, but he was never the same.

Where is the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing?

What’s your record for consecutively asked questions?

What is sharper than the thorn?

The false rose.

What immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry?

The eye of the tyger.

What have you done with Dr. Millmoss?

Fed him to a hippo as punishment for eating your porridge.

Where is fancy bred?

Northern Saskatchewan.

What book or books do you press upon friends?

Stranger Things Happen, Kelly Link

Clouds End, Sean Stewart

The Magician’s Assistant, Ann Patchett

What can we, as a group, do to increase the popularity of multi-stage bicycle racing as a spectator sport in America?

Encourage the use of hallucinogenics?

I once had a creative writing teacher tell me that he didn’t understand why authors used science fiction or magical realism to tell a story or impart a theme. Why do you think we do, when good old realism might do the trick?

Why eat creme brulee when you could eat Twinkies?

Have you found that during the Reagan-Bush-Bush-Quayle-Bush-Cheney era the quality of your writing has gotten a little dodgier?

Why not… what hasn’t gotten dodgier?

What is the meaning of life?

Office supplies & summer mornings.

Can you say something, particularly in light of these grave times, about the writer’s role or responsibility in the creation of work that is purely literary, that is the work of the imagination, as opposed to work that serves more overtly and diras a voice of conscience?

Work that is purely imaginary, that is the work of the imagination and not of dogma, that emerges from the soul instead of being shaped out of held notions and inherited conceptions – this is the work that feeds true conscience and gives us hope of understanding that Other is none other than Self.

Gertrude Stein said: “I have destroyed sentences and rhythms and literary overtones and all the rest of that nonsense, to get to the very core of this problem of communication of intuition.” The relationship of form to content. Form as it facilitates communication, particularly communication of the remote, of the mysterious. Form as it permits the dramatization of states of mind. As it serves to make comprehensible the incomprehensible. What are your views on this subject?

Beth’s Simplified Dichotomy of Approaches to Form:

Approach 1: Jokes are funny. A joke has a set-up and a punchline. If it has a set-up and a punchline, it is funny.

Approach 2: If it makes me laugh, it’s funny.

I subscribe to Approach 2.

O

Next — Christopher Rowe

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Jeffrey Ford – Trampoline Interview

Wed 1 Jul 2009 - Filed under: Authors| Posted by: Gavin

Trampoline: an interview

Jeffrey Ford (The Yellow Chamber)

Were there any particular writers or stories that influenced the writing of the story that will be appearing in Trampoline? If so, how exactly did they influence the writing of your story?

The writer would be Farrid Ud Din Attar, author of the great Sufi poem The Conference of the Birds and also a book on the quantum phenomenon of Entanglement. I’m not exactly sure how they influenced me, but I know they did.

Is your Trampoline story generally representative of the sort of story you usually write? To elaborate: is this story a departure in style or subject matter (or any other sort of departure, for that matter) for you? If so, what was different or new for you in the writing of this story? Do you think it is a new direction for your writing, or simply an experiment?

Some stories I write because I feel I know the story, some I write to discover them. This was a discover story. Every time you take the boat out it’s a new departure, even if you stick to that part of the bay you know best. With this one, I braved the inlet and made it out into the deep ocean. There, I discovered a floating island.

What’s your favorite cocktail?

My favorite cocktail is the dry martini with olive, but the view from the floor isn’t my favorite, so I’ve switched to VO on the rocks with a little bit of water. The descent is slower and more manageable for one of my advanced age and declining sensibilities.

Which of the seven deadly sins is your favorite these days?

Jeez, it’s hard to pick one. My specialties are hubris and sloth, and I practice them simultaneously. Greed has never been a favorite, but gluttony is a close friend.

What’s your favorite rule of thumb?

Sometimes you have to have the courage to do nothing.

Who’s been eating my porridge?

I have. Refer to my answer previous to the previous.

Where have all the flowers gone?

To Iraq for the graves of the thousands who have succumbed to shock and awe so that we might continue to wonder where all the flowers have gone.

Who cleft the Devil’s foot?

The Almighty foot clefter.

Does she or doesn’t she?

If she doesn’t, she ought to.

Did he ever return?

Yes, and he brought souvenirs.

Where is the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing?

The horse is blowing the horn and the rider is blowing the horse.

What is sharper than the thorn?

My left big toe nail.

What immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry?

Roll your cart over the bones of the dead.

What has it got in its pocketses?

Holeses.

What rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?

That would be my mother-in-law.

What has it got in its ‘pocalypse?

A cup of coffee and a come hither glance.

How far is it to Babylon?

It was a short bike ride from West Islip when I was a kid. Now, it’s a half step to the side.

Can I get there by candlelight?

A taxi is still quicker.

“Where is last year’s snow?”

Right here, baby.

Why is a raven like a writing desk?

They both eat worms. Neither of them pays the bills.

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Knock yourself out.

Can this cockpit hold The vasty fields of France? Or may we cram Within this wooden O the very casques That did affright the air at Agincourt?

No and no.

Can you call spirits from the vasty deep? Will they come when you do call for them?

Only after a meal of beans and Pineapple Sangria. They’ll come but I’d rather they didn’t, especially in public.

What have you done with Dr. Millmoss?

I stole his road map, kicked his ass, and sent him on his way.

Where is fancy bred?

The fancy bakery.

Where do you hope to haunt when you’re gone (or, I guess, when you come back)?

A five dollar window at Belmont Race Track.

What are your favorite kids’ books? What was your favorite when you were a kid (say, 10)?

I’m a big Curious George freak, but I guess that was younger than 10. Stowaway to the Mushroom Planet, Doctor Dolittle, Tarzan, Treasure Island, King Solomon’s Mines, The Time Machine, Off on a Comet.

What’s the most favorable sort of weather for your creative process?

Overcast. Like Goya, I don’t like the sunlight interfering with my inner light.

Tell me a little about when you left home to live on your own.

Lived in a motel room. Ate a lot of Pilgrim Franks, the bright red color of which would come off on a paper plate, and Showboat Pork & Beans (pale little bags of dust in a brown sauce with a thimble size loogie of fat in every can). Drank 99cent six packs of 16 oz. Pabst Blue Ribbon and smoked a lot of Coney Island Green (a dime bag was as big as a bed pillow). Worked grouting bathrooms at the motel. Read the greats, the near greats, and the hopelessly obscure. Wrote stories in black and white composition books with a pencil (tales of snooze inducing brilliance). Lived with this girl with long, blonde hair. We hung out in the graveyard behind the motel, talking cosmic and messing around. One night a ghost came to our room and turned the pages of a big book on the dresser. We climbed the mountain across the highway, drinking from a bottle of Tequilla every few hundred yards. At the top, we found a broken down shack. Inside, in an old book, there was a love note, written in pencil, dated 1932. The salutation was: Love you forever.

If you could have a writer of your choice come live with you, who would it be and what writerly stuff would you want to talk to them about?

Emily Dickinson because I think she would be a quiet house guest. I would ask her what the dashes were all about and what I should do to better tell it slantwise.

When’s the last time you changed your mind about something? I think I mean a radical shift of personal values — regarding art (“Suddenly, I’m not crazy about Billie Holiday, in fact, I’m not even sure I’m spelling her name right”), regarding anything (“Actually, you can go home again”).

I went on a conscious crusade to read books, one a month, I was sure I would not like. I ended up liking many of them, loving some of them, didn’t finish the rest. It taught me that I don’t know what I like all the time, so almost everything is at least worth a look or a listen.

What book or books do you press upon friends?

The Woman in the Dunes – Kobo Abe

The Conquest of New Spain – Bernal Diaz

My Life in the Bush of Ghosts – Amos Tutuola

The Four Wise Men – Michel Tournier

The Mothman Prophecies – John Keel

End Product: The First Taboo – Sabath & Hall

Mickelsson’s Ghosts – John Gardner

Did you ever go to a really low rent amusement park that had trampolines stretched over shallow pits and bounce and bounce and bounce and get really confident and start bouncing from one trampoline to the next but then kind of lose it and bounce in to your cousin Jeff and cause him to fall into a split timber fence and knock out one of his teeth? Did you ever do that?

No, I never did that. Trampolines always scared the shit out of me. I don’t like heights and in gym class in school, before you got on the trampoline, they went through a list of all the ways you could break your neck and wind up a vegetable. I realized at a young age that this was something I was not particularly interested in.

What can we, as a group, do to increase the popularity of multi-stage bicycle racing as a spectator sport in America?

Drive your car crazy like a crackhead and give everyone the finger.

I once had a creative writing teacher tell me that he didn’t understand why authors used science fiction or magical realism to tell a story or impart a theme. Why do you think we do, when good old realism might do the trick?

The pursuit of truth has made beautiful monsters of us.

My story has a semi-wild chimpanzee in it; does yours?

Sort of, in the narrative voice.

Have you found that during the Reagan-Bush-Bush-Quayle-Bush-Cheney era the quality of your writing has gotten a little dodgier?

Not really, but I certainly despise all those mother fuckers.

What is the meaning of life?

I don’t know the meaning of life, but I know what gives it meaning. Love your friends and family, be kind to strangers, do your work well, respect nature, pets and wild animals, follow your dreams.

What, in your opinion, is the relationship, if any, between the so-called real world and your particular imaginary one?

The older I get, the less the difference is noticeable. I would say I’m somewhat better looking in my imaginary one.

If you could live in a book, which one would it be?

A Moveable Feast by Hemingway (for only a week, though. Then I’d move on to Travels With a Donkey by Stevenson for a week, etc….).

O

Next — Greer Gilman

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Vandana Singh – Trampoline Interview

Wed 1 Jul 2009 - Filed under: Authors| Posted by: Gavin

Trampoline: an interview

Vandana Singh (The Woman Who Thought She Was a Planet)

Were there any particular writers or stories that influenced the writing of the story that will be appearing in Trampoline? If so, how exactly did they influence the writing of your story?

I read a beautiful short story by Walter Tevis in some ancient anthology and loved it, although I have forgotten its name. But I also wanted to pull its leg. Hence my story.

What’s your favorite cocktail?

The juice of fresh mangoes.

Which of the seven deadly sins is your favorite these days?

Gluttony, especially as applied to mangoes. Real mangoes, that is. Not the ones you get in the Western Hemisphere.

What’s your favorite rule of thumb?

Faraday’s Right Hand Rule. (If your thumb points in the direction of a current in a wire, the magnetic field lines due to the current will wrap around the wire in the same sense as your fingers).

Do you have any pets? How many? And if so, how do they affect your writing (if at all)?

I have a venerable 14-year-old Corgi dog who is a constant companion, without whom I would not be able to write a word. He lies under the table and sighs while I type. I discuss character development and plot lines with him, and he gives me this extraordinarily wise, patient, Buddha-like look in return.

What is the writer’s role in inhabiting the commercial spaces of publishing?

To subvert the dominant paradigm.

Who’s been eating my porridge?

Certainly not me, since that is not my idea of breakfast.

Who cleft the Devil’s foot?

I don’t know, but you could ask Dubya and his cohorts since they seem to be intimately acquainted with the aforementioned gentleman.

Does she or doesn’t she?

You are assuming she is a binary system.

Where is the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing?

Where is the dyspeptic camel? Where is the green grass growing?

What immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry?

The unskilled fingers, the blind eye of a god called Evolution, perhaps?

What has it got in its pocketses?

Several new stories. Interested?

What has it got in its ‘pocalypse?

Ask Dubya.

O

Next — Rosalind Palmero Stevenson

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