This month’s Merry-Go-Round Blog Tour topic is a self interview.  Right.  I’ve browsed Google* and have come up with a few completely unanswerable questions, and I will attempt, before your very eyes, to answer them.  You will think they are simple, but the words are deceptive.

• How long does it take you to write a book?  You think that’s an easy one.  The easy, snippy answer is, “As long as it takes.”  That’s not the answer you want to hear.  I can tell you a first draft takes approximately three to four months.  Don’t ask about revision.  I’m still working on that.
• How many books have you written? Are we talking finished first drafts? (3) Polished, submittable works? (0) Mostly finished drafts? (3) Finished wherever they’re at, because they will never see the light of day? (2) Not counting the ones in the answer to Question 4.
• Which is your favorite? It’s kind of like children in that respect.  You can’t ask a mother which her favorite is, because each child has characteristics they admire, love, and respect.  Books are kind of that way.  Polar Bear on the Loose will always have a special place for me — it was my first full length novel attempt, I completed the first draft, I love the story, but it needs a lot of polishing before it will be a book others can love.  Twilight is another draft I’ve completed.  I love certain aspects of it, and it needs a serious revision before I can really get it going, but it has so many elements that tickle me and interest me, that I hope I’ll be able to get it to a point where it can be read by someone else — one person has read it and provided wonderful feedback and has kind of a crush on one of my characters.  I think if you can write a character people want more of, that’s a good thing. Threads & Ties is another book near and dear to me — the subject matter is a twist on what is considered “normal” behavior, so I’m enjoying playing with it.  It’s a not very romantic romance.  Finally, there’s Walls, which is a play on the phrase, “If these walls could talk.”  Walls is a series of vignettes narrated by the walls of one of those lower budget, park at the door, and walk into the room motels.  The walls narrate what they see.  It’s incomplete, but I enjoyed writing it and would like to polish it for other eyes to see. I’m currently working on Granite Hill, which is a working title (they’re all working titles).  This one may be shaping up to something I could really like, too, but it’s too early to tell.
• When did you write your first book and how old were you? I have two self-bound books I wrote during my teenage years.  One, which this blog is named after, is a conglomeration of my physics and trigonometry class notebooks from high school.  One was titled, Rantings of an Insane Trigonometry Student and the other was titled, Ravings of an Insane Physics Student.  Some friends wanted copies of it.  Copier machines were not as prevalent then as they are now.  Computers were room-sized or building-sized devices that programmers fed punch cards into to perform calculations (really).  So I typed those notebooks into book form on my electric typewriter (it looks like this) in three copies — one for me and one for each of my friends.  Yes, this is pre-Facebook, and I only had two friends back then.  Some time before that, I typed a book of poems and bound them between two hand decorated pieces of cardboard.  My artwork indicates something pre-teen, but I’m pretty sure I was a teenager at the time (I’m not much of an artist).
• Um.  Okay.  How are the kittens doing? They’re wonderful.  Thank you for asking. 

On the left is Lady back when she was known as “Three Cat.”  On the right is Tarzan, back when he was known as “Four Cat.”

This photo was taken this week of the four cats in the San Antonio house garden window.  Ajax is in the upper right, and Natasha is in the lower left.  Tarzan, of course, is in the upper left, and Lady is in the lower right.

Thank you for joining us today.  If there are any questions the interviewer missed, please ask in comments below, and we’ll see if we can get a follow up with the author.

* Some of these questions have been taken from this page: Suggested Author Interview Questions

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