Tag Archives: Interview

“Come in, — come in! and know me better, man!” -Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

We’d love for you, our wonderful readers, to get to know us better. That’s why, each month, Kristin Luna will interview a member of The Fictorians. We’ll learn more about each member, such as their writing processes, their work, where they live, and what they prefer to drink on a warm summer’s day. We hope you enjoy this monthly installment of Meet the Fictorians.

Meet the Fictorians:

Emily Godhand

Kristin Luna (KL): Hi Emily! How are you and what are you drinking right now?

Emily Godhand (EG): I’m well, doing the same thing I do every night, Pinky. Try to take over the world.
…while sipping a hard drink, of course.

KL: You’re one of our newest Fictorians, and I thought this would be a great opportunity for our readers to get to know you. Can you tell us a little about you?

EG: Dark thriller author, former psych nurse, and rat enthusiast. I am an Ambassador for Wattpad.com, where I am the administrator for a profile of international paranormal authors called the “Ouija Board of Directors.”

KL: What inspires you the most when it comes to writing?

EG: I’d have to say music and the nightmares I’ve had for over 16 years now. Lyrics are poetry and music is poetry without words. I’m not sure I’m actually capable of expressing myself without music playing, but fortunately I always have a radio playing in my head. If you see me dancing with my eyes closed, you’re welcome to join in. As far as the nightmares, they were of course surreal, but I couldn’t die in them (because I’m me.) I started to write them down, and then re-write them, and through that I was able to become lucid and redirect the story from inside the dream.

My friends discovered my journal and kept asking, “…and then what happened?”, so I turned them into stories.

KL: You have a great presence on Wattpad. What’s your username/website? Can you tell us a little about that process?

EG: Absolutely. You can find me at https://www.wattpad.com/user/Godhand, as well as the ParanormalCommunity profile at https://www.wattpad.com/user/ParanormalCommunity.

Signing up for Wattpad is easy! All you need is a username and password of course, and then an email, Facebook, or G+ account. As far as Wattpad particulars, I’ve started a book to help new users adjust to the particulars of how to do well on Wattpad. The biggest thing to remember is that Wattpad is mostly a community of mobile readers, so, activity within the comments section will be your biggest way to interact with the community and to draw attention to your story. Wattpad’s biggest demographic is young women, and there is a robust LGBT+ and fanfiction community.

KL: Do you have any books out right now?

EG: I currently have a work in progress on Wattpad called “Fear of the Dark”, about two women who seek freedom, then revenge, on the cult that killed them. I’m also working on two projects for the ParanormalCommunity to teach the community within a frame story so that writers and readers alike can enjoy. Paranormal Academy teaches users about historical/cultural lore and common tropes and Paranormal Powers teaches about such things as ESP, Clairvoyance, Telekinesis, and other such abilities found in paranormal stories. That one I write with my friend and fellow author J.S Bennett, who also wrote a story with me that was published in “A Game of Horns: A Red Unicorn Anthology” that raised scholarship funds for aspiring writers to attend the Superstars Writing Seminar here in Colorado.

KL: Where can we read more of your writing?

EG: At this time I’m currently working on launching my website, www.emilygodhand.com, where I’ll post updates on my works in progress and links to published books. Probably some rat pictures, too.
…Yeah, that’s about guaranteed. My rats are adorable.

KL: I’m friends with you on Facebook, and I love your posts. Specifically, I love your posts about rats. Where did your love of rats come from?

EG: When I was still a psychology major, we studied rats at the lab at the main campus and I became fascinated with how much about them I had learned wrong. They were clean, intelligent, friendly creatures who just wanted to snuggle and eat snacks with their friends. They’re also incredible survivalists, who will not only persevere and thrive in the worst conditions, but care for their colony. They bring food to the infirm, they share treats, they will free a trapped buddy and defend each other.

I guess I really identified with a small, cute, cuddly creature who will sink their teeth into your flesh if you threaten them or their friends.

KL: You have a unique job, and I was wondering if you could tell us more about that and how it’s factored into your writing?

EG: I am still a nurse, and though I’ve since moved out of psychiatric work due to frustrations with the system, I use my writing to help educate and advocate about mental illness, particularly depression and PTSD, or Post-Trauma Stress Disorder. A lot of my characters will often have anxiety, depression, or PTSD due to the things they’ve experienced in the past or things experience during the course of the novel. I was frustrated with reading about heroes who were unaffected by what happened to them, because I feel that reading is a way to learn how to process, adapt, and overcome similar situations in our lives. Reading about the character’s mental process of dealing with these issues and coming out on top can be cathartic and validating to a reader (and to the writer crafting the story). It shows heroes who are afraid, and then act anyway. People who are tired and exhausted but carry on. It also humanizes people with these conditions and I hope will reduce harmful stigma and stereotypes, because it is written in their, or rather my, voice.

I currently work with individuals with physical disabilities, who, like individuals with psychiatric disabilities, I feel are another underrepresented group within literature. While my patients’ stories aren’t mine to tell, I do like to include characters with a variety of disabilities in my stories because they are people who exist in our world, and deserve to exist in worlds we craft.

KL: If you could give any writerly advice, what would you say to new writers?

EG: Writing, or any form of communication really, whether music or art or dance, is a practiced skill that is developed. If your words aren’t perfect at first, keep writing. If you hate everything that comes out, get something down anyway, because you cannot edit nothing. Write sentences where you accidentally leave out the verb because you’re so excited to get the idea out. If you get stuck on a scene or what a character says, write “TK” and come back to it. Don’t lose the momentum. Maybe you won’t feel it’s ‘good enough’ because your first draft is not the same as the edited, polished work of individuals who have worked for years on improving their skill, and that’s okay. Keep working on it.

KL: What has been your favorite Fictorians post that you’ve written so far?

EG: My favorite would have to be my two part piece on conflict. Part One, Perceiving A Threat covered the ways that different people from different backgrounds might perceive, or not perceive, a threat. Part 2, Reacting to the Threat, described the different ways someone of different upbringings and experiences might react differently.

Within our culture and within writing, I feel there is not enough understanding of what constitutes violence and the various and valid ways that people perceive and react to it. The social, cultural, and situational things that influence how we might act or react should be reflected in the stories we tell, because they are our stories, and how we communicate with each other. What we learn from stories influences how we perceive ourselves and contributes to the lens through which we read our experiences, past and future.

***

If you have any questions for Emily, please leave a comment below. Thank you for reading!

Meet the Fictorians: Gregory D. Little

March 31, 2016

Kristin Luna

Author's Perspective Fantasy Gregory D. Little Interview Making Progress as a Writer The Fictorians The Writing Life The Writing Process No Comments

“Come in, — come in! and know me better, man!” -Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

We’d love for you, our wonderful readers, to get to know us better. That’s why, each month, Kristin Luna will interview a member of The Fictorians. We’ll learn more about each member, such as their writing processes, their work, where they live, and what they prefer to drink on a cold winter’s day. We hope you enjoy this monthly installment of Meet the Fictorians.

Meet the Fictorians:

Gregory D. Little

Kristin Luna (KL): Hi Greg! How are you doing today, and what are you drinking?

Greg Little (GL): Hi Kristin! I’m doing well, though I’m a bit stressed in the way I always get with a looming deadline. At this precise moment I’m drinking an iced, black tea (a mix of iced tea blend and blackberry sage). Unsweet iced tea is my go-to drink, because I like a drink to taste like something and I can drink as much unsweet tea as I want, guilt-free. I also enjoy flavored fizzy water, wine, craft beer and a mixture of my own design I call Cokenade, which is Coke Zero and limeade. Wow. I just realized that I am SUPER pretentious with my beverage choices. Um, next question!

KL: No, not at all! That Cokenade sounds like it should have its own SyFy Channel movie, for real.

So another pressing question: dogs or cats? I have to know.

GL: We have a nine-year-old yellow Lab named Riley (I’ve actually done a Fictorians post about him because he likes to carry his poop bag for us on walks). Both my wife and I are allergic to cats, so that was never really an option, but Riley makes that doubly so. As a puppy he was genuinely curious about cats and wanted to play with them. Two face-clawings later, he shifted to more of a “cat genocide” stance. He’s never actually caught one, thankfully (cats seem to realize he means business and generally retreat), but he would love to. I try not to let this prejudice me toward cats, but there are only so many times you can have your arm nearly pulled out of your socket on a walk before you start to dread the sight of them.

KL: Nothing like a good cat-clawing to the face to learn a lesson. That’s how my cat keeps me in line, anyway.

Where did you go to school and what did you study?

GL: I graduated from Virginia Tech (Go Hokies!) with a bachelors in Aerospace Engineering. If you’ve read my author bio, I call myself a rocket scientist. That’s because when you tell people you are an aerospace engineer, you get one of two reactions: an impressed look or a look that mingles pity and horror. For whatever reason, changing that to “rocket scientist” gets you the impressed reaction a lot more often, so that’s what I go with.

KL: Wow, that’s awesome! So how does your education figure into your writing?

GL: Since science is all about how the physical world works, I like to understand that for the stories I write. For fantasy, I want some sort of logical underpinnings to my magic systems and worldbuilding. That doesn’t mean that every magic system has to have a clearly explained, Brandon Sanderson-esque set of rules, only that I as the author like to have an idea how it works even if I don’t make that clear to the reader. When I tackle science fiction, I feel an obligation to get the science right as much as possible. I try to make any deviations from science deliberate choices to suit the story rather than accidents.

KL: You have one book out right now called Unwilling Souls. What’s it about and what was your inspiration for writing it?

GL: A few years back I wrote a story, “Godbane,” set in a world where the gods were imprisoned inside the hollowed out center of the planet, and a group of blacksmiths had to keep them that way using tools forged of a special metal and empowered by the souls of the dead. The story was about teenage, star-crossed lovers on opposite sides of a social chasm left over after the war that imprisoned the gods.

After finishing the story, I thought it would be interesting if those characters had a daughter together, and then a falling out, after which each became powerful leaders and bitter enemies across that same social divide that had doomed their relationship. Unwilling Souls is the story of their daughter, Selestia (Ses for short). Abandoned by her mother, now a business magnate, and her father, now a terrorist, Ses is training as an apprentice smith at the prison where the gods are kept as the story begins, . An attack on the prison occurs on her sixteenth birthday, an apparent attempt to free the gods. As Ses’s father is the prime suspect, she’s forced to go on the run when the authorities lump her into their suspect list.

This interview is perfectly timed, too. Starting tomorrow, April 1st, it will be featured in a Kobo Next for Less promotional deal, where readers can pick up a Kobo e-copy for 50% off it’s normal price. That deal will last until the 15th of April

KL: Great story! Do you have any other books coming out that we can look forward to?

GL: I do! Unwilling Souls is the first of its series, and the sequel, Ungrateful God, should be out sometime this summer. In fact, the deadline I mentioned before is to deliver the manuscript to my editor, Fictorian Emeritus Joshua Essoe. Work on the cover is nearing completion as well, so things are on track! While Unwilling Souls is a chase story, Ungrateful God is more of a mystery with an explosive final third. I’m quite pleased with how it’s turning out.

KL: As Frank and Evan have mentioned in their interviews, writing a series isn’t easy. Do you have any advice you can share that you discovered while writing a series?

GL: Lots! One in particular applies if you write like I do. I’m mostly a discovery writer. While I have end goals and major waypoints in mind when I set out to write a story, a lot of the stuff between those points is discovered as I go. Sometimes the points themselves shift as things change! If you write in a similar fashion, the fear of hemming yourself in later in a series can be very stressful. While you should definitely plan out enough to avoid major disasters of a painted-into-a-corner variety, don’t sweat the small stuff too much. Little roadblocks of that sort will force you to get creative, resulting in better ideas than the lazy ones that are usually the first to occur to you.

KL: Let’s get more general: when it comes to writing advice, what’s the best you’ve heard?

GL: People will tell you that you have to write every day, or x many words or pages per day, or that you should write in the morning vs. the evening vs. the dead of night. When you get right down to it, most people are advising you to write in exactly the way that works best for them. But people are different. Write in the way that works for you. If writing every day causes you to burn out after a few months, then don’t write every day. If writing once a week causes you to get distracted away by other things, then write more often than that. Whatever keeps you writing regularly and enjoying it, do that thing.

KL: Excellent. So let’s touch on how you came to be a Fictorian. When did you join the Fictorians and why?

GL: I met Evan at World Fantasy Convention 2012 in Toronto and we got along well while hanging out with the other Superstars alums. A few months later he contacted me, asking if I’d be interested in doing a guest post. I did and had a great time. He then followed up with similar requests for two or three more months in a row, and after that I was inducted officially. I joined because it’s just a great group of people and coming up with content on a regular basis forces you to think about the details of writing in ways you might just gloss over otherwise.

KL: And finally, what is your favorite Fictorians post that you’ve written so far?

GL: I hate to say I peaked early, but The Inevitability of Myth, one of my guest-posts, was a lot of fun to write, because it combined my love of storytelling with my fascination over modern neuroscience’s giant leaps into understanding of how the human brain works.

***

If you have any questions for Greg, please leave a comment below. Thank you for reading!

Kilts and Coffee with Petra

February 12, 2016

Guy Anthony De Marco

Guy Anthony De Marco Petra Klarbrunn The Writing Process No Comments

I had a nice conversation with occasional Fictorians guest poster Petra Klarbrunn about how she ended up becoming a writer. Here’s a mini-interview that gives a good explanation as to why some folks write.

Guy Anthony De Marco

When I walk into Everyday Joe’s Coffee House in Fort Collins, Colorado, it takes all of ten seconds to locate Petra Klarbrunn. A prolific author who writes under at least ten pseudonyms, she built a temporary wall of research books around her clunky pre-Lenovo IBM laptop to keep the world at bay. Her face remains focused on her computer, fingers pounding away on keys polished blank and smooth from years of hard use.

I place my order for an espresso and a cup of Earl Gray for Petra. While the volunteer baristas expertly craft the brews, I realize that my author friend looks more like a librarian than a writer of bizarro stories and niche erotica novellas. Her round Harry Potter-esque glasses are oversized for her small features, and tattoos of Marvel comic book heroes peek out from around her well-worn Batman t-shirt. Everything about her is a clash between multiple worlds. Marvel versus DC. Demure librarian versus hardcore literary dominatrix.

She remains in her own bubble universe until I pierce her event horizon by sliding the ceramic mug of steaming tea into the only open spot within her reach. Her clear blue eyes lock onto mine and she flickers the corners of her mouth upwards.

“Gimme a minute to finish this scene, would you?”

Nodding, I take the opposite chair at her table and locate a few spare inches of table space to set my cup. The coffee house is half-full of students from Colorado State University, and Petra blends in seamlessly. I’m easily the oldest person in the place. Most of the students are working on homework or socializing. Several kept glancing at the attractive brunette with the loud keyboard. Once I had settled in, even more eyes wandered towards our table. Was I her father, her friend, or something more? The enigma baffled the college crowd.

Petra finally pushes the screen down on her laptop, the old hinges squealing in protest, and she looks up with a lopsided grin. “I had to get that scene down before I forgot it.”

“What are you writing about today?” I asked while adding a little brown packet of raw sugar to my espresso.

“Chick porn.” She laughs with a clear soprano voice when a barista stops in his tracks at her words and then continues on as his face turns red. “Gotta pay the bills. This one is set in Ireland.” She waves at the books piled on the table with the grace of a ballerina. All of them pertain to some aspect of the Emerald Isle, ranging from travel books to historical castles. “I love to travel. One day I’ll make it out to Europe. I’m keen on visiting Wales, Ireland, and especially Scotland.”

When pressed why she wanted to go to Scotland, it was her turn to redden her complexion. “It’s the kilts. I can’t resist someone manly enough to basically wear a skirt and drink Scotch.”

Sex, a travel bug, and a sad childhood are what started Petra’s foray into writing erotica novellas for women and, to a lesser extent, for QUILTBAG readers. “It allowed me to travel virtually for a while, burying my head in travel books and online forums so I could forget my problems. Eventually, I had to get off of my butt and go see things without having to peer through a window made by IBM. By the time I was ready to get on a plane, I had 33 erotic novellas published under a couple of different pseudonyms. I made enough to cover my living expenses and to travel to my first exotic location – Los Angeles.” Her laugh is contagious, and eventually everyone in the coffee house is smiling.

When asked about her family, Petra admits she barely remembers her father. She does remember the tears and the sobbing that gripped her mother. “I was, what, five or six years old. I couldn’t understand what was wrong with my mom. She was Wonder Woman to me…indestructible, yet loving and warm. To see her so broken up, it broke my heart.”

Those feelings haunted Petra. In grade school, she fought so often that the principal joked he was going to adopt her because they saw each other more than he saw his own kids. “I was a terrible hellion. The girls start growing faster than the boys, and they were all afraid of me. I never had to wear make-up because I had a bruise or a black eye. Maybelline Fist, I used to call it.”

Unfortunately, when the boys started their growth spurts, she remembered the principal saying that she had better start to use her brain instead of her fists if she wanted to survive. “That made sense to me. Someone talking to me like I was an adult, telling me things that made logical sense…that was the game changer for me.”

Several bleak Christmas holidays in a row, one of them requiring a midnight jaunt to a park to locate a suitable shrub so she and her mother could have a tree to decorate, convinced Petra to settle on a career choice. She heard about the lofty advances that authors like Stephen King were pulling down, so that seemed like an easy method to get rich. “My god, what an idiot I was. Still am, now that I think of it.” She laughs and snorts, which causes her to laugh uncontrollably for several minutes.

“I was the proverbial broke, struggling writer until I wrote my first erotica—based in Scotland, of course. My roommate read it straight through and convinced me it was fantastic. I uploaded it to Amazon’s Kindle Digital Publishing platform, and it began to sell. I made more money the first month than I did waiting tables. I wrote another one in a week, and that one did even better. I kept writing, and the books got better and better as I learned my craft. I now make enough to pay my bills, my mom’s bills, and I’m taking her on a two-week vacation to Scotland next month.” That lopsided grin lights up her features again. “We’re going to drink real scotch and find out what’s hidden under those kilts. It’s my mission in life now.”

About the Author:

Guy Anthony De Marco is a speculative fiction author; a Graphic Novel Bram Stoker Award^®nominee; winner of the HWA Silver Hammer Award; a prolific short story and flash fiction crafter; a novelist; an invisible man with superhero powers; a game writer (Sojourner Tales modules, Interface Zero 2.0 core team, D&D modules); and a coffee addict. One of these is false.

A writer since 1977, Guy is a member of the following organizations: SFWA, WWA, SFPA, IAMTW, ASCAP, RMFW, NCW, HWA. He hopes to collect the rest of the letters of the alphabet one day. Additional information can be found at Wikipedia and GuyAnthonyDeMarco.com.

Meet The Fictorians: Evan Braun

January 29, 2016

fictorians

Interview The Writing Life 2 Comments

“Come in, — come in! and know me better, man!” -Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

We’d love for you, our wonderful readers, to get to know us better. That’s why, each month, Kristin Luna will interview a member of The Fictorians. We’ll learn more about each member, such as their writing processes, their work, where they live, and what they prefer to drink on a cold winter’s day. We hope you enjoy this monthly installment of Meet the Fictorians.

Meet the Fictorians:

Evan Braun

Kristin Luna (KL): Hi Evan! What are you drinking right now at this moment?

Evan Braun (EB): I am enjoying a cool, refreshing glass of Fresca, which is probably my favourite beverage of all-time. (I say “probably” because I go through phases; next week I might answer Diet Dr. Pepper, but I’ll be wrong. The real answer is Fresca.) While I’m on the subject of Fresca, one of my greatest frustrations in life is that in Canada we only have the original citrus-flavoured variety, whereas in the States you have access to the sweet ambrosia that is Peach Fresca and Black Cherry Fresca. Unfortunately, the folks at Coca-Cola, likely in conjunction with the Government of Canada, have decided we don’t deserve good things.

KL: Maybe Canada and the U.S. should come together and have the Fresca Peace Talks? I think you guys deserve some Peach and Black Cherry Fresca!

So, few people other than the Fictorians know this, but you were our intrepid leader since nearly the beginning. How many years exactly?

EB: The Fictorians started in March 2011 as a loose collective of bloggers. Though I was involved from the start, there was no leader per se. I gradually stepped into a leadership capacity about a year and a half later.

KL: What was it like in the beginning? How was the group The Fictorians formed?

EB: The original group of bloggers met in 2010 at the first annual Superstars Writing Seminar in Pasadena. The idea of forming a writing blog came about while we were nursing drinks at the hotel bar, which I think is how all convention-goers come up with their great ideas. We spent the next year in close communication, forming an accountability email list where we’d make weekly goals and report on our progress to each other. And then, almost exactly one year later, the Fictorians made its debut.

Like I said, there was no leader, and in fact we barely had any organization at all. We had a loose commitment to blog once a month, and to schedule our posts for certain days, but there was nobody to make sure any of this got done. We strived to post three days a week, which I think is a good goal at the start of an endeavour like this.

From there, our numbers grew, people came and went, and now we have a bona fide organizational structure undergirding the whole enterprise.

KL: You already let the cat out of the bag, so I don’t mind reminding everyone that you live in Canada. Do you draw inspiration for your writing from your surroundings?

EB: At this moment I’m looking out my window at a seemingly endless field, flat as three dimensions can produce, covered with at least a foot of snow—three or four feet where the snow has drifted—and the overcast and foreboding skies presage an imminent winter storm poised to dump another foot and a half. Once the snow starts to fall, everything will be white and I won’t be able to distinguish the horizon between ground and sky. Beautiful. And horrible. Definitely a mix of those two.

But do my surroundings inspire me? In a way, yes, I think they do. I’m currently working on a novel about a small colony on Mars, and its population and social structure is quite similar to the small town I actually live in. And of course, on Mars the colonies are isolated and the weather bitterly cold (albeit a lot drier than my prairie reality).

KL: If you couldn’t live in Canada, where would you live?

EB: I guess the easy answer might be… Hawaii?

The only other place I have lived is Huntsville, Alabama, for two and a half years, so I’ve had a good taste of the American south. As much as I enjoyed my time there, and made some of my very best friends, the experience only sweetened my appreciation of home. I guess the point I’m trying to make is that there was a time, when I was younger, when I wished I lived somewhere bigger, better, and busier than the quiet little place I’m from. I don’t feel that way anymore. And it turns out I really like quiet.

Not to make a joke or take this in a cosmic direction, but honestly, how strange and scary and life-changing and inspiring would it be to leave Earth and live on another planet, like Mars? Our generation is almost certainly going to see people do this in our lifetimes, which I think is just mind-boggling. So there you have it. It’s Canada or Mars for me!

KL: I hear you about someplace quiet. And Mars should be reeeeeeally quiet.

You have been busy with your series The Watchers Chronicle. Is the series complete?

EB: Yes, I’m finished that series now. It’s three volumes—The Book of Creation, The City of Darkness, and The Law of Radiance. The third book came out this past spring, and it’s done now. Of course, I reserve the right to go back to it at some point in the future. There are a number of nooks and crannies in that story which haven’t been told yet.

KL: What’s something important you learned about writing and/or about yourself while writing The Watchers Chronicle?

EB: My biggest lesson in writing was that it’s so much harder to finish something than it is to start it and keep it going. While I was writing the third book, I was flooded by one amazing cliffhanger idea after another. It would have been so easy to ramp up the story to an irresistible climax and then defer the endgame for another book—and I imagine I could have kept doing that for quite a number of volumes. Writing a satisfying and definitive ending is hugely difficult.

As for my biggest lesson about being a human being? Well, that would be related to the pains and joys of collaboration (I had a co-author), busting through creative logjams, and working through the difficult and painful process of making compromises.

KL: Speaking of pains and joys, what’s your ideal writing time look like?

EB: In the middle of the night. Being self-employed, I have the freedom to work any hours I choose—and by extension, write for whatever hours I choose. This means I usually get up around noon and go to bed around 4:00 a.m., with my prime writing time happening right at the tail end of that “day.” For me, nothing can beat those quiet, distraction-free hours.

KL: Any words of wisdom you’d like to impart on our readers?

EB: It’s nothing profound. I hear all the time that the one quality that sets really successful people apart from the rest of humanity is dogged determination. You just have to keep going, no matter what. Yes, make changes and adjustments when you hit a roadblock, but never stop. Because getting back up to speed and rebuilding lost momentum is a crushing weight.

KL: Second to last question, I swear, what is your favorite snack? (Crossing my fingers you’ll say Boy Bawang.)

EB: Kristin and I are both partnered to Filipino men, and as such have recently been introduced to the joys of Filipino cuisine. (Except balut, no thank you!) Now, I’m not sure “cuisine” is the appropriate term for a heavily salted deep-fried corn kernel, but anyway, that’s Boy Bawang for you. The best flavours are classic garlic, adobo, and butter.

KL: [Audible stomach growling]

EB: Well, to be honest, while that is the most recent snack to be added to my repertoire, I’m not 100% certain it’s my true favourite. I’ll probably never get over the simple, high-caloric pleasure of eating a bag of Doritos one chip at a time, sucking the last morsel of radioactive-orange nacho cheese into my gaping maw. Sorry, that got a bit gross.

KL: Not gross at all to this Doritos fan! I hope one day I get rich enough or get a really fancy grant or something to sleep on a bed of nacho cheese Doritos. I can just eat my way out of bed every morning, and fall into a crunchy bed every night.

ANYWAY. Final question: what is your favorite Fictorians post that you’ve written so far?

EB: This is an insidious question. Because I don’t recall, at this moment, any one post that I’m especially proud of, I had to go through each of them to refresh my memory. And it turns out I’ve written 67 Fictorian posts to date. So thanks, Kristin.

Well, because I took the time to peruse my entire Fictorians past (it turns out 2013 was a good blogging year for me), I’m going to provide my three favourite posts. Here goes.

3. “It Doesn’t Happen in a Straight Line”, September 2013. Here, I break down the many plateaus of my burgeoning writing career, and what I’ve learned from them.

2. “Making the Science Work: Freedom through Limitation”, March 2013. In this post, I examine the relationship between science reality and storytelling convenience.

1. “Platonic Relationships in Fiction (a.k.a. ‘The Glue’)”, February 2013. I remember struggling mightily to come up with a good blog idea for Romance Month, so I waited until the last minute. And then this came out, and it’s my clear favourite.

If you have any questions for Evan, please leave a comment below. Thank you for reading!