From The Library is a series of interviews with some of my favorite storytellers. For the latest SCHEHERAZADE update, click here. For NIGHTVISIT, click here.

Holly Black brings mythic fiction to the masses in a big way. For that alone, she qualifies as one of my heros, but naturally that’s just the beginning. Holly is charming, gracious, and generous with her formidable writing expertise. Evidence: she once drove me to the train station in the pouring rain, kept me warm and dry in her car ’til the train showed up, and then passed the time with an insightful mini-lesson on plotting that completely changed my outlook and has guided my own story choices since.

Of course, I fell hard for Holly’s rich, juicy prose well before I met her. TITHE and VALIANT, her urban gothic faerie tales, are delightfully (read: brutally) true to the old tales and the lives of teenagers. Her series for young readers, THE SPIDERWICK CHRONICLES (with Tony DiTerlizzi), are bestsellers; production on the movie has begun.

Also? she’s just neat. You’ll see what I mean in a sec.

You just finished up a stint at that infamous speculative fiction writer’s workshop, Clarion. Was Clarion your first experience as a writing instructor? I know that you’ve worked extensively with critique groups as a participant; what was it like to be on the other side of the desk, so to speak?

It wasn’t my first time instructing, but my previous experience was more of the “get in, say some stuff, do an exercise, then get out” kind. This was the first time I was teaching over an extended period of time.

First of all, let me say that it was immense fun to work with the extremely talented 2006 Clarion class. They were smart, funny and really good writers. The hardest thing about teaching Clarion, in fact, is the quality of the writers. It is much easier to figure out what an obviously flawed story needs. It’s a lot harder when the stuff is of very high caliber.

It was hugely helpful to have Kelly Link as my co-teacher. She’s been through Clarion before as both a student and an instructor and could explain things that I wouldn’t have ever known, like:

Kelly: Here’s the part where we make them wear dresses.
Holly: There’s a part where we make them wear dresses?
Kelly: It’s tradition.
Class: *dons sparkly gowns*

Also, Kelly is a genius, so working with her was a learning experience for me as well as the class.

According to the bio on your website, you collect rare folklore books and spooky dolls. Tell me a bit about your collections. A superdorky corollary that I can’t resist: name the top five titles in your folklore book collection.

This is the superdorky question I have long dreamed of being asked!

Actually, what I have is old editions of books, like the 1893 version of Robert Kirk’s Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies (with introduction by Andrew Lang). The thing is, there are exciting new editions coming out all the time–like the new Secret Commonwealth Maria Warner is bringing out in November–so there’s nothing I’ve got that you can’t get now, although some books were out of print when I first got them.

Hence, this is my top 5, not according to rarity or any academic criteria, but just my favorites:

1. Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries by WY Evans-Wentz
2. The Middle Kingdom by Dermot Mac Manus
3. The Encyclopedia of Fairies by Katharine Briggs
4. A Lycanthropy Reader: Werewolves in Western Culture by Charlotte F. Otten
5. Vampires and Vampirism: Legends from Around the World by Dudley Wright

As for my spooky dolls, my collection has evolved to be almost exclusively Korean ball-jointed dolls, often known as “dollfies.” I have even gone so far as to buy them tiny coffee cups and cigarettes so they can join me in my ennui.

What were some of your favorite stories growing up? (”Growing up” refers to any time between the ages of zero and, say, eighteen, and “stories” can refer to anything — books, movies, comics, and, of course, folklore and fairy tales.)

This is the hardest question to answer, because there were so many books that were important to me. My favorite book when I was a kid was THOMASINA by Paul Gallico. After that, I read a lot of Lloyd Alexander and Madeline L’Engle. A couple of years later, I remember reading Anne Rice’s INTERVIEW WITH A VAMPIRE obsessively, along with Tanith Lee’s LORDS OF THE FLAT EARTH, Michael Moorcock’s Elric books, and Tolkien. Also hugely influencial for me was Brian Froud and Alan Lee’s book, FAERIES.

My mom had an “unedited” compilation of Grimm’s fairy tales that I loved and when we had to do a huge report on a subject in eighth grade, mine was vampires in folklore.

Victorian mansions, fairies, ghost stories, crazy hats — I’m guessing (call it a hunch!) that you probably like Halloween. What was your most memorable Halloween costume?

Hahaha. I did like Halloween as a kid, but the thing was, my mother liked to make me and my sister these elaborate costumes. She was hard-core about it, so you had to tell her what you wanted to be six months in advance of Halloween. And often the costumes were so complex you could barely move. But there was a contest at the community center every year and my mother was going to kick all the other mother’s asses. I remember being Lady Mouse with a giant paper mache head that was impossible to move in and also The Frog Prince, where I had a huge rubber head. Basically, I remember barely seeing out of a lot of eye holes.

Name one thing that you have yet to do but would like to do.

See a ghost.

From The Library is a series of interviews with some of my favorite storytellers. For the latest SCHEHERAZADE update, click here. For NIGHTVISIT, click here.

With WOMEN IN REFRIGERATORS, her thoughtful, passionate examination of one of comics’ nastiest plot devices, and YOU’LL ALL BE SORRY, her hard-hitting humor column at CBR, Gail Simone was making a splash in comics well before she started writing them. These days, her work includes runs on DEADPOOL, ACTION COMICS and LEGION, the miniseries KILLER PRINCESSES with Lea Hernandez, Simpsons titles for Bongo Comics, and of course, BIRDS OF PREY, where she continues a long stint as ongoing writer.

Gail is warm, witty, a wickedly good writer, and wise. She has also heartily encouraged my own writing efforts for years. I’m thrilled to have her in the comfy chair and honored to call her a friend.

I remember that when we first started talking, ages ago, I was somehow under the impression that you didn’t have a long and extensive history as a reader of comics. I have no idea where that came from, but there you go. And then one day it hit me: waaait a minute, Gail has read a comic or seven! I’m tellin’ ya, my thought process is a little screwy sometimes.

Anyhoo. Can you tell me a little bit about your history as a comics reader? When did you start reading comics? What were your favorites back in the day?

For me, it was more a matter of reading everything I could get my hands on than comics in particular. But I immediately had a great fondness for comics–I love everything from the tactile sensation to the hidden language artists use to convey movement with static images. I loved kids’ comics, girls’ comics, horror comics, and humor comics especially, but I did have a weird love for the Justice League. I liked how they were friends, how they obviously cared about each other.

The advice I always give to aspiring comics creators is to create, not RE-create, but in some ways, I still work that theme a lot, that the characters care for each other, even if they show it in unorthodox ways.

Bitching about the comics industry is lame and un-fun, so this question isn’t meant to be about that. However, what’s the one thing you would change about the comics biz if you could?

This is one thing I feel I’m fortunate enough to be in a position to be able to do something about, in a small way. I find a lot of readers have lofty goals as fans, about what they’d do if they could turn pro. Then they turn pro, and those goals mostly seem to be firmly back-seated, as it were. For every pro who writes what they said they would if given the chance, there’s another who is taking an easier path.

For me, it’s about diversity. And it’s not merely an issue of fairness, it makes good economic sense. If we have diverse creators, and diverse characters of note, then we are more likely to have a less cloistered readership.

It offends me when I go to a con and see this whirlwind of color, age, gender and orientation reading our books, and there are still dinosaurs saying that the readership is purely male and white and straight. It’s stupid. Every other goddamned media on the planet knows this, that you can’t make that kind of pure generalization anymore because damned if the audience won’t betray your prejudices.

This is one of the things I do really respect about Dan DiDio, is that he knows this, and believes it’s important. So I’m happy that we’re in sync about this. Say what you like, the guy is walking the walk, and we’ve only just started. He knew he’d take shit for it, and he still felt it was important. I think that’s terrific.

There’s a lot more yet to be done. A lot. But we’re trying.

You write a lot of superhero comics. If you could have one superpower, what would it be?

I do, although I hope to branch out more a bit in the next two years. I miss doing humor books, and I love horror, and I have a fantasy book I’d like to try.

And flight, it’s no question. Although Aquaman’s powers would be pretty cool!

Villains or Heroes?

Both, no doubt about it. Love Superman AND love Dr. Psycho. It’s all voices, and voices are what makes writing like heroin for me.

Your rather roundabout (and hella cool!) way of breaking into comics has been much-discussed, so I won’t go there. Instead, tell me about your first job.

My first job? I worked at a pizza place in high school where the boss was creepy. I quit and turned him in to the labor board. I worked at Dairy Queen for a while. I could probably still make a fair dipped cone.

I found your blog recently and was delighted. However, it’s been a while. More updates soon?

Yeah, as dumb as this sounds, one thing I don’t want is to have one of those blogs/message boards/websites that’s nothing but a shrine to myself. I’ve been to a few that…I don’t know, they just make me shake my head. When people start talking about their ‘fans,’ I get a little appalled.

At the same time, I had a few little stories I wanted to tell, and if I simply put them on my message board at comicbookresources, they’d disappear quickly and I’d lose them. So I made a blog, and at first I didn’t even tell anyone…it really was just kind of an inside joke that would amuse only me.

The truth is, I just don’t find myself all that fascinating, and if you want to learn about my writing, the best place is always going to be in the books themselves. So it’s kind of an oddball spot where I will occasionally drop a bit of drabble and if people read it, fine, if not, that’s also okay. But I don’t worry about updating…if it gets updated, it’s because I had some dumb thing to say at that exact moment, rather than because I’m trying to maintain traffic.

I know some writers have created websites not to promote themselves, but as convenient catchalls for information and reader interaction. If I can do that, and not make it a shrine deal, that might happen someday.

(Image copyright 2002-2005 Lea Hernandez; nipped from Wikipedia)

So there I was at the New York Comic Con, standing in front of some booth running one of those “spin the wheel, get a prize” promotions of the kind that WIZARD used to feature at San Diego before my good friend Doug “Mr. WIZARD” Goldstein ran off to Hollywood to write crazy sketches of animated toys. I belly up to the wheel and off to the side of the table there’s this book, and from its most arresting cover I know immediately that it’s… it’s… a comics-infused young adult novel.

Back the heck up. Am I looking at what I think I’m looking at? I peek at the back cover copy. Yeah. I have to have that.

“Hey, can I have that?” I ask the lady holding court, trying to be all casual so she won’t say no.

“No,” she says.

Three months later, I see the book behind the table at a comics convention (MoCCA) yet again. This time, I make no pretense.

“PLEASE!” I beg the Houghton-Mifflin lady.

“Oh, jeez,” she says. “Here.”

Score!!

Barry Lyga’s debut novel, THE ASTONISHING ADVENTURES OF FANBOY AND GOTH GIRL, is a true original: a touching and funny coming of age story with an affection for comics culture so seemlessly woven in that readers won’t know what hit them. Evidence: The anonymous narrator (let’s call him Fanboy) is a fledgling creator, and nothing will stand in the way of that once-in-a-lifetime chance: a portfolio review from Brian Michael Bendis. Sound dorky? Admit it, you’ve been there. One thing is certain: the comics love just pours out of this book, and in the eyes of a woman who really wishes that more teenagers would fall in love with comics despite the hurdles to, oh, I don’t know, buying them, that’s a real value-add.

Of course, my next goal was to find out who the heck Barry Lyga is and where he’s been hiding all this time. My searches yielded few hits. But while the Internet is a fickle mistress, she does give us the superpower of the Myspace message. So I contacted Barry, who patiently listened to my raving and agreed to an interview.

Most folks probably aren’t aware that you were in the comic book business for a long time. You used to work for Diamond, right? What did you do there?

Yeah, I worked at Diamond for a little over ten years. Basically, anything in Diamond Marketing that wasn’t Previews, I handled it! Web sites, retailer publications, Free Comic Book Day, book market publicity stuff, etc.

The lead in your debut novel pines away for, among other things, “a copy of Giant-Size X-Men #1 in mint condition.” Rumor has it that you have a sizable comic collection yourself. What are some of the notables in your collection? What books do you scour the longboxes for at cons?

My collection is a LOT smaller these days, thank God. It was starting to take over the basement. I’ve really pruned it down to the stuff that A) I love to read over and over, and B) will probably never be collected. I have VERY few notable books because I’ve always collected what I loved, not what I thought I SHOULD collect. The one exception is a pretty decent copy of Adventure Comics #247. I sort of pined for one all during my adolescence and a few months after I graduated from college, my local comic book store suddenly acquired one. I had to have it… and I did!

Amen to that. “Comics are for reading” has always been my motto. To that end, “notable” can of course include the comics for love, as ’twere. What favorites did you track down?

That Adventure #247 was my Holy Grail, really. There were also some obscure Legion appearances — in Justice League, for example — that took me a while to hunt down. I was very pleased to track down a run of Secret Society of Super-Villains because I had never read those and I’d always wanted to. Oh! And just recently I came across an issue of Supergirl (the eighties series, not the Peter David one) which was the second part of a story from Superman. I’d never seen it before and I’d always wondered how that Superman story ended!

At cons, my longbox-scouring tends to be very whimsical. Last time I went crazy at a con, a buddy of mine and I decided that we had to hunt down every appearance of Tyroc. Never mind that we already OWNED all of them at home - we needed them at that very moment, that very weekend, in our possession. That was a lot of fun. (Especially just to see the look on a dealer’s face when two manic guys rush up and say, “You got any Tyroc comics?”)

I have no idea who Tyroc is. Clearly this is where my nerd cred gets called into question…

He was the first black Legionnaire, created in the seventies at the height of the blaxploitation craze. No one involved was particularly proud of him and he was rather deliberately written out of the series later. Definitely one of those embarrassing “white guys trying to be uber-hip black guys” creations.

Ah, yes. I do remember this guy now. A certain someone used to fill me in on all this stuff…

All right. I have to ask: was Bendis briefed about his rather substantial role in your novel? Did you call him up one day or shoot him an email and say, “You know, dude, time with you at a con is kind of like the Macguffin around which my book revolves?”

Believe it or not, I don’t even KNOW Bendis!

I wanted the book to feel real, especially since I knew comic book fans would end up reading it, so I decided to use real creators and titles instead of designing some alternate universe of the comic book industry. When I decided to shop the book around, I e-mailed Bendis, just to let him know about his role, but I never heard back from him. (Just because I worked at Diamond didn’t mean I had a magic Rolodex with creator phone numbers on it!)

That kind of floors me, simply because whole Bendis subplot just feels like one of those things that comics people would know about, and THAT’S because one can’t keep anything a secret from comics people. There’s a perception, and it’s not *entirely* wrong, that the “walls” between comic book creators and… the rest of us are wafer-thin.

You’d think! I sort of thought for a while there that the phone would, inevitably, ring and someone would be calling about precisely that. But the book is in a whole different universe from comics — I think most comic book people aren’t even completely aware of it. Now that it’s out in stores, that may change.

And those walls may be wafer-thin, but they’re still there.

I did hear recently - through a friend at Marvel - that he’s aware of the book and is OK with it. I would totally understand if he never actually sat down and read it, though - that might be a little strange for him. But hey - if one of the Hollywood calls I’ve been getting pans out, maybe he would want to have a cameo in the movie!

I think a movie of this book would be delightful. And I really couldn’t imagine anyone playing Bendis except… Bendis!

Same here, though if he wasn’t interested I think I’d change it to a made-up creator — it just seems WRONG to have a movie where a living, breathing person is played by someone else.

In your book, you get the details of comics conventions just right. Have you ever dressed up at a convention?

Nope! Never had that particular urge. When I see someone with a really cool costume, I can admire the craft and the dedication, but I just never had the desire to dress up.

You have a degree in English from Yale and a taste for classical literature as well as comics. You read a lot. You write a lot. Name five of your favorite words.

Coruscate. Pleonasm (never get to use that one). Lyrical. Surreal. Solipsistic.

From The Library is a series of 5-question interviews with some of my favorite storytellers. For last week’s SCHEHERAZADE update, click here.

When I’m too tangled to write coherently, I usually just make a list. So it is, trying to write an intro about Ed Brubaker.

1. He has written scads of comics. Really good comics. But you already knew that.
2. He and Sean Phillips have a new creator-owned series, CRIMINAL, and it starts next month. You probably already knew that too.
3. You may not know that he just won a Harvey Award.
4. His favorite comic book character is Jughead
5. He has the distinction of writing the only fictional character that I’ve ever had a crush on.

The personal investment and emotional content present in Ed’s writing is second to none, which is why it grips me so. And his writing really pushes me to make mine the best that it can be. It ain’t easy.

1. What’s your poison?

I don’t drink much anymore. When I did, I liked Manhattans and White Russians, though not on the same night, obviously.

2. I was reading your recent interview with Tom Spurgeon and it sounds like CRIMINAL is one of those projects that has been bouncing around for a while. When did you first start jotting down the ideas that would become CRIMINAL? Why did you sit on it for so long?

Four years? Maybe five. It sat, at first, because I just couldn’t do it. I was under contract at DC, and I also was having some back and forth with the foreign publisher I was talking to, and it was looking less like we were on the same page about it, so I just put it aside. And then other stuff happened and it moved further back on the burner, basically, until it came time to do something new that I would own.

3. Tell me a little bit about your notebook-keeping habits. (My own notebook love is really strong and I’ve read mentions of notebooks in your interviews for years, so I can’t resist.)

I have about a dozen notebooks going at any one time. Mostly they’re one book for each project I’m working on, and I just jot down any ideas I have for future storylines, or character notes. And I do all my plotting and outlines and thinking in those notebooks. There are scenes in some of my notebooks, of course, that never make it to the page. I’m not as good at keeping up with them as I used to be, but I think it’s important to have this time to sit with paper and pen, and actually think and write by hand. It makes me look at it differently, and it makes me move slower in the thinking stages of the writing, which is often the most difficult part, really. I will sometimes spend days just stumbling around the house depressed because I haven’t figured out the outline for the next issue of something yet, so I can’t type.

The greatest thing about notebooks, though, is that you go back through one and find some piece of a story you never used, and suddenly you have a new story to tell in some other book. You recycle what you don’t use elsewhere.

4. You’ve given me some great music recommendations in the past. How important is music as an influence? Do your books ever have soundtracks?

Criminal does, in my head. I’m hearing some weird combo of Louie Armstrong, Frank Sinatra, Johnny Cash, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder (the Innervisions era), Leonard Cohen, and even some Simon and Garfunkle, as I write it, along with just a general early 70s Blaxploitation soundtrack, like Across 110th Street.

This is the first time in a long time I’ve thought about music while writing, though. But it’s because I’m trying to create a whole world, and a whole mood to go along with it, and music really helps create mood.

5. How old were you when you started writing? Do you remember the first story you ever wrote?

I was in 2nd or third grade, and I wrote and drew a comic book called The Werewolf, about a guy who’s out hunting, and shoots a werewolf but the bullet goes through the wolf, bounces off a rock, and lodges in the man’s forehead, and after that he can become a werewolf anytime he wants and he fights crime.

Okay. This is approximately the most outstanding thing I’ve heard all week. Jussayin’.

It was pretty much a Werewolf by Night rip-off, which, considering I was 7 or 8 years old, shows you the audience for that book really did exist.

Bonus round: You’re everywhere these days, doing heavy promotion for CRIMINAL. How’s MySpace treating you? :)

It’s hard to say. I’m still waiting for Pam from the Office to accept my friendship, but other than that one problem, it seems to be going well. I’ve only had the page a few weeks, and I’ve got a decent size list of “friends” a lot of them retailers and comics fans, which is what I was hoping for. Though whether people really look at all the bulletins and blog posts you do seems hard to gauge so far. I check out my bulletins and see I get one about every hour or so, sometimes a lot more, so I fear my messages to the people might be getting lost in the shuffle.

But at least it gave me a place to put up the Criminal parody ad my wife and friend made, which has now gotten more unique views than the thing its parodying. So, that’s nice.

Welcome to this week’s FROM THE LIBRARY. Last week’s latest round of SCHEHERAZADE pages can be found here.

Cherie Priest’s outstanding debut novel, FOUR AND TWENTY BLACKBIRDS, is a sharp, sweet cocktail of old school Southern gothic and modern supernatural pop fiction. It also, I confess, made me insanely jealous, then slightly depressed. And then I wanted another. You know, like any good drink.

Cherie, on the other hand, inspires me. With one successful book down and two more on the way plus a solid Internet presence and a cachet of loyal fans, she’s not doing half bad for a “new” novelist (see that first question). Also? She’s a dish. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist.) And charming as hell, as you’ll see. Read on…

I hear you’ve been writing for a long time. Tell me about some of the novels you wrote before FOUR AND TWENTY BLACKBIRDS.

I read somewhere that you have to write a million words of pure shit before you come up with anything worth reading - and I surely exceeded that count, but at least I got started young. The first novel I ever finished was called WHO BURIED THE GRAVEDIGGER?, and I wrapped that baby up when I was about fifteen. It was a trashy southern gothic, but so eyeball-bleedingly bad that it defies further description.

That’s, like, the best title ever in the history of anything. Who did bury the gravedigger?

Honestly? I forget. It was a southern gothic murder mystery where a ghost ends up having to solve his own murder. He was accused of killing his entire family (thus earning him the nickname “the gravedigger” but he died the night before his trial was supposed to start … or something …

Then came several half-projects never completed, and then by college I was scribbling novellas. There was one called PIPER that eventually turned into a short story, and one called THE PENTAGONAL - that one was an epic fantasy that topped out around 60,000 words. So it turned out, I’m not any good at epic fantasy. I think there was also one called WHILOM.

I don’t know what was up with all those Ps and Ws, though.

What does your workspace look like? (I love this question.)

At the moment, I really hate my apartment (we’re moving shortly, thank God) - so I do most of my work at a coffeeshop in Seattle called “Aurafice.” It’s ostensibly a goth/industrial themed sort of place, I think - with faux gears hanging from the ceiling, red/black mottled walls, and local artist installations all over the place. I like it because (a). free internet, (b). it’s close to my evil apartment, and (c). the people who work here are all pretty friendly - or at least, they aren’t openly hostile … which is not always a guarantee around these-here parts.

A goth/industrial coffee house? Isn’t that kind of an oxymoron?

Naw - it’s a swank little place. A little bit dirty, a little bit friendly. All black and red, with a near-constant stream of good music playing. It’s great!

Name five things you’ve done for money.

1. Laid down in front of cars so they’d have to stop and buy lemonade from our stand
2. Worked drive-through at McDonald’s
3. Got pummeled with wet sheets at a hospital laundry
4. Petitioned to legalize gambling to raise money so I could attend a private Christian school
5. Taught freshman comp

That wet sheets thing sounds… unfun.

I worked at a hospital laundry for one whole day. In that day, I stood under a machine that swung big bundles of wet sheets out over my head, at which point the bundles would be unfurled - sending giant heaps of wet sheets raining down upon me. Hypothetically, I was supposed to unwind the wet sheets and hang them up by their corners in this machine that would dry, press, and fold them. In reality, I spent a whole lot of time doing duck-and-cover.

Villains or heros?

All of the above. One’s no fun without the other, after all.

I’m a fangirl for many things - that’s no secret - but probably my oldest fandom is X-Men. I first started reading the comics when I was about fifteen; I’d get them for a dime apiece at the library thrift store in the Orlando Public Library - where they sold off excess stock to the public. Why they had comic books there, I have no idea … but I loved it.

When the X-Men cartoon first appeared back in the early 90s, it played on Saturday mornings. I used to feign illness so I could stay home from church and watch it.

Got any role models?

That’s a hard question to answer; there are a lot of people whose work I admire - but who I don’t necessarily seek to emulate on a personal level. It’s much easier to talk about influences; for example, right now I’m a little besotted with M. Night Shyamalan - I like the way he’s not afraid to try different things, even at the risk of leaving slower audience members behind. I’m also experiencing an Alan Moore revivial, because no one else does Victoriana quite the way he does. I also love - and strive in vain to be as good as - Alfred Hitchcock, George Romero, Dash Hammett, and many others. I’m a consumer slut for a good storyteller, especially a storyteller who can break new ground or take on the market on his or her own terms.

From The Library is a series of 5-question interviews with some of my favorite storytellers. For last week’s SCHEHERAZADE update, click here.

Brian Wood barely needs an introduction these days. Working steadily in comics for the past ten years, his extensive credits include THE COURIERS, JENNIE ONE, POUNDED, FIGHT FOR TOMORROW, COUS COUS EXPRESS, THE TOURIST and the critically acclaimed maxi-series DEMO. He currently writes LOCAL for Oni Press, SUPERMARKET for IDW and DMZ for Vertigo. A second ongoing Vertigo series, a Viking epic called NORTHLANDERS, is forthcoming.

Not only is Brian a good friend, he’s one of my favorite people in comics. I’m thrilled to have him here in the Library’s virtual comfy chair.

So your new (just announced) project is about Vikings. Have you always had a thing for Vikings? I’ve always had a thing for Celts, personally…

Yeah.. Vikings, Celts, you name it. Since I was little. We were raised on it, it seems. I was a very early reader as a kid, and before everyone else my age caught up, I was placed in these sort of silly “advanced reading classes”, which was just me and a few of my fellow early readers sitting in the empty cafeteria for last period reading different books. I remember reading KING ARTHUR and as a counterpoint, THE MISTS OF AVALON.

Dude. Marion Zimmer Bradley!

Did you ever see that Mists of Avalon film? Kinda funny.

I have it, but I’ve never actually watched it (unfortunately, I can say that about a number of DVDs in my collection). I do try to re-read the book every now and again. I read it for the first time when I was 20 and I still remember how I reacted to the naughty bits — oo la la! This totally cracks me up now.

It’s got a great cast: Juliana Margulies, Joan Allen, Angelica Huston, Samantha Mathis… even Michael Vartan from ALIAS as Lancelot. The book doesn’t jive any more with my own interpretations of the Arthur story, but it’s still a fun read.

What were you like as a child?

Quiet. Read a lot, played in the woods. I don’t think my sort of childhood exists any more, which is sad.

I’d never thought about it like that before, but wow, so true.

We got to run around in the woods unsupervised, and we didn’t have anything high tech to entertain us. We barely watched local TV.

Did you ever build forts? I was a big forts-builder. Maine woods is good for that.

We mostly built snow forts. The plows would create these 15-foot high snow banks because we lived at the end of a cul-de-sac. Although I think that snowfall like that is also lost to the ages.

You told me once that you read over 2 hours per day. Name your last 5 books read.

PRETTIES and UGLIES and SPECIALS by Scott Westerfeld (don’t ask)
HELLBLAZER: ALL HIS ENGINES by Mike Carey and Leo Manco (all comic
should look and read this good)
THE MONKS OF WAR by Desmond Seward (research)
THE LOST MEN by Kelly Tyler-Lewis (back when men were tough)

What does your workspace look like?

It never changes. Two 6′ foot tables side by side, one for drawing, one with the computer. Wall of shelves behind me. I never have quite enough room so things are stacked, printers tucked under tables, the windowsill is another work surface. It’s cluttered but very clean and organized, I suppose. For all my dependance on the computer for aspects of my work, I use a lot of paper: paper organizers, post-its, scrap paper for longhand writing. There’s a lot of paper lying around my office.

If you had to be stranded somewhere in the world with a full wallet and all the time in the world, where would it be?

Either Scandinavia or Italy. I’d probably spent most of the money on food.