What can you tell us about your new release, Two-Faced?
Winona Treesinger, our MC from Two-Faced, isn’t your typical hardened, gritty Urban Fantasy anti-heroine. She’s the last great Bigfoot princess, and her personality is basically a cross between this sweet, naive wide-eyed wanderer and an enormous butt-kicking monster. Best of all, to her, there’s nothing strange about being both at once. It’s just who she is. She’ll daintily wipe her mouth with a cloth napkin at dinner, then turn around and Hulk Smash a couple dozen cannibal demons into paste with her bare fists on the walk home like it ain’t no thang.
What's on your top 5 list for best books you've ever read?
1. Once a Hero by Michael A. Stackpole
2. Dead Man’s Walk by Larry McMurtry
3. The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – especially “The Final Problem”
4. Lord of Chaos by Robert Jordan
5. The Drowned Cities by Paolo Bacigalupi
What fictional world would you most like to visit?
Tel’aran’rhiod from the Wheel of Time series. I would love to live another life or ten whenever I shut my eyes, exploring the wolf dream, changing and rebuilding the landscape, and having my actions there affect the waking world.
What's your favorite thing about writing?
Same as my favorite thing about Tel’aran’rhiod—living other lives and building strange and fascinating new worlds. I get to play make believe for a living. For somebody who never really grew up, it doesn’t get much better than that.
What's a typical day like for you?
Whew, okay. So my typical day breaks down like this: Wake up, fall out of bed and start the coffee maker, feed and referee our boys, teach homeschool while guzzling coffee, read or clean up around the camper while the boys do their lessons so I’m available if they have any questions, feed everybody again, try to squeeze in some writing during their naptime, play outside for a while soaking up some Vitamin D, make more food, rush everybody off to martial arts class (I think I hold the record for world’s oldest yellow belt), come home, put the boys to bed, play some MtG with my husband/best friend/fellow old person yellow belt, tuck him into bed, then stay up until the wee hours of the morning cranking out the words, sometimes with a little help from a can of Monster Ultra—usually purple, sometimes pink.
BAM. You're a superhero. What's your superpower?
I’ve actually given this a great deal of serious thought just in case I ever do get to choose. See, I want a superpower that will enrich my life, but not add any responsibility or endanger my loved ones. My dream is to have Fart Vision—the ability to see farts, preferably in vibrant colors. I would see them in line at the grocery store or in an elevator or at a funeral and know who dealt it and laugh to myself. It’s the simple pleasures that make life worth living.
What scene in Two-Faced was your favorite to write?
Any scene where Chris and Winona are feeding off of each other comedically. I’m a sucker for the classic straight man vs. comedian sketch setup, and between the detective and the Bigfoot there’s a ton of “Who’s on First?” going on, except with roll-y chairs, magic, and murder instead of baseball.
Do you have a motto, quote, or philosophy you live by?
“Don’t panic.” If it’s good enough for intergalactic hitchhikers, then it’s good enough for me.
