1. Leave me a comment saying, "Interview me."
2. I will respond by asking you 5 questions.
3. Update your LJ with the answers to the questions.
4. Include this offer to interview someone else in the post.
5. When others comment, asking to be interviewed, ask them 5 questions.

Questions from padparadscha

1. Who is your favorite comedian?
I like a lot pretty much equally, but I give bonus love to anyone who, er, comedifies to music (Tom Lehrer, Flanders & Swan, Roy Zimmerman, Mark Graham (No YouTube vids of him performing, but here's someone doing I Can See Your Aura with random giggling from the person taping), and of course my dear friends Zeke Hoskin and Rob Lopresti.

Keen observers* will note that my love of comedy/commentary songs heavily plays into my goal of knowing a song about everything. If anyone is interested in an even longer list of musicians and groups, I'd be happy to supply it (as well as take suggestions!).

2. What goes on top of your pizza?
In the ultimate admission of un-American-ity, I don't much like pizza. But when I do eat it, my absolute favorite is from a place in Oly called Vic's, where each slice includes a ton of veggies and several whole roasted garlic cloves. Mmmmmm, garlic!

3. Can you remember appointments, or do you have to remind yourself? If so, how DO you remind yourself?
I'd usually say that I remember appointments without difficulty, but Wednesday I totally forgo about a meeting until my boss showed up to tell me we were five minutes late for a meeting in a different building. So I suppose I should say that I normally remember appointments, and when I don't I require a personal reminder from the guy who signs my timesheets.


4. What got you interested in World-building?
That's tough, because it's in the oh-so-distant past. I started with reading a ton of fantasy and wanting to write my own stories, especially stories that weren't quite so heavy on symbolism and prophecy, because black-and-white morality and doing things Because They Are Written always bugged the hell out of me. Then I ran into bluwyngz, who did the same kind of thing and was working on fashion design for various cultures in her world, and it sort of solidified into World Building: World History Class Avoidance Edition. Since then it's kept up partly because it adds direction to anything I'm currently interested in - when I studied linguistics, I thought of how to apply it to my world. Geography, ditto. Random bits about pre-longitude navigation? Also useful! World building allows you to take *any* study into the "synthesis" stage of learning, which helps keep me involved in potentially dry subjects.

Downside: I refused to take a geology class in college because I was terrified of being trapped by the impossible plate tectonics of Calenthe and never being able to think about conculture again.

5. Tell me about the coolest project you're working on right now.
I'm actually in an odd lull, since I just got back from a big trip. I finished the Ursula Le Guin illo that was the Coolest Work Project Ever, and Sheep in Space have slowed down a bit. I have felt a sudden urge to work on world-building, specifically architectural sketches and maps, so that's what I'm most excited about now.


*Anyone who hangs around me more than an hour or two

Um... I think some of my characters have been getting it on behind my back.

I mean, that's okay and all, they're grown-ups and they can do whatever they want as long as there's consent and they leave the dog out of it. It's just kind of a suprise.

For the last few weeks I've been able to feel the nagging, insiduous depression-monster every-other day or so. I've been fending it off, and it's pretty obvious - dude, that's chemistry thinking - and if it's obvious, it's not bad.

But it's grey, I gave the car a flat because I'm stupid, there are no cuddles, I was offered the schedule I wan't and can't afford to take it, and Marik and Vaer are having a fight in my head. About his (multiple?) bastard children. How come the love story in my head usually skips the snoogling and goes right to drama? (without going right to plot, which makes actually writing it more difficult).

Actually, observing the whole mars/venus* thing is really pretty entertaining, mostly because I totally know where both sides are coming from, and it's like watching ships pass in the fog. At high speed. Repeatedly. And one of them is a zippy zodiac raft crewed by a drunk monkey.

I stayed awake for hours again last night
searching for a reason to keep up the fight
I've made choices that I don't regret but
I've got problems I don't get

Let's wait one more day for the conversation
One more day to make it right
Let's get away from the confrontation
One more day just buying time

*Not just sexist stereotypes - there's a really big class discrepency and some culture shock going on too (see, I'd never abandon my belief that both genders are capable of being perfectly reasonable**).

**This doesn't mean that any given individual of either gender is capable of being reasonable, though.

The hanger queen is the non-functioning airplane one keeps around to scavange parts from.

Since switching from Elyvaer's viewpoint to Marik's, things have really clicked. The story works much better as a story, and I seem able to keep Marik's internal character more consistant. Of course, as must happen, there were some little bits of decent writing in with all the crap that was written the other way, in particular an amusing little bit of Elyvaer's internal monologue, which will have to go.

I decided early on not to go for the slow-growing-affection-because-of-adversity thing, or the hate-each-other-except-when-saving-mutual-lives. Elyvaer harbored a crush from day one, end of story. Anyhoo, I left in the first two paras for context, but the internal monologue bit at the end is what I found amusing. Other context...Trevon's the mage, one of many characters who has been cold-heartedly dumped from my current version.
---
( Story segment )

It's lunch, but while I just stopped working on a listing of all the youth programs at the Chehalis and Centralia libraries, my head has been all about fantasy epics and authoring all morning.

I'm inclined to say that this is required reading for madalchemist, westrider, and fenmere, because they're good sounding boards and I throw things at them mercilessly to see what bounces off. But Derryck is the only one I'm sure I could take in a fight*, so for everyone else it's just normal lj-cut blather.

Brought to you in part by the three-hundred words or so of prose that NEEDED TO BE WRITTEN after I went to bed last night, which meant crawling out of the coziness and searching for pencils (which artists never ever have to hand). TWICE.

( Cut for long-windedness and unnessecary introspection )

*I'm afraid of hurting Fenmere, because it might make his fuzzy-cuddly stuffings fall out.