How to Answer Interview Questions: 3 Tips for Both Pros and Newbies

Sunrise on the Ortiz Mountains the other day created dramatic and crisp pink highlighting on the fresh snow of the peaks. Quite spectacular.

Our topic this week at the SFF Seven is an interesting one:Remedies for Stale Interview/Podcast Questions.

It's timely for me because just yesterday I did a signing with my good friend Darynda Jones at Page 1 Books in Albuquerque for our brand new releases. These are fun events for us, because signings are always more fun with a friend, and we have a lot of enthusiastic readers who are excited to see us. (Mostly her, but hey!) It was standing room only (albeit in a small space), with the final count at 48 people. Which is pretty nice for a small bookstore signing.

This is the... fourth? signing we've done together. Something like that. And quite a few people who attend are regulars. Or they see us at other regional events. As usual, Darynda and I didn't plan any particular program. We asked the audience what they wanted and they called out, "Anything!" And, "You  guys are always great - whatever!"

Which doesn't really help, but makes for a nice shiny.

Then the events coordinator calls out in this fake, high-pitched voice from the other side of the stacks, "Talk about your books!"

Oh. Yeah. Right!

The thing is, we tend to forget a key truth doing events and interviews: for most of the people reading or listening, this is their first time hearing anything about us or our stories.

For me, in particular, when I started talking about my new release, THE EDGE OF THE BLADE, I had to recall that most of the people there had come to see Darynda and hadn't read any of my Twelve Kingdoms or Uncharted Realms books. Yes, some of my die-hard readers attended, but they love talking about the books regardless. Just because *I* feel like I have talked about the books a lot, that's not true of the people listening.

So that's Rule #1:

1. There are no stale questions. They're only familiar to YOU.

This is that syndrome where it's easy for kids to remember their one teacher's name, but less easy for her to memorize all thirty of theirs. So, even though it made be frustrating or eye-rolling to get the exact same question for the 4,739th time, the person asking hasn't heard the answer before. Respect that and give them your fresh and sincere reply. I find - very interesting, too - that my answers to some of them have changed over time. I discover new aspects of my self and my process that way.

2. Limit the types of interviews you do.

One thing I've asked for so far as blog tours online, etc., is that I prefer not to answer "canned" interview questions. A lot of sites and bloggers do this, because it's much less work. I don't blame them a bit! They make up a list of questions and send that to be filled in. However, once I've answered a particular site's questions, then I've done them. There's not much sense in doing them again, particularly since they're already discoverable online. Instead I ask for questions related to the book I'm releasing. Yes, this dramatically cuts down on the number of interviews I do, but it also focuses my own efforts.

3. Keep notes as you draft and revise a book

I try to do this, and do better on some books than others, but any time I ask a question online, crowd-sourcing information, or something amusing happens, I note it in a running document for that book. This provides a treasure trove of anecdotes to tell about the book. There always seems to be interest in the process of writing the book, what was difficult, what you might have borrowed from real life, etc., and this document will refresh your memory when you feel you've said everything there is to say. Even you newbies can start doing this and, believe me, later on you'll be glad you did!

So, old pros - what tips do you have? Readers, what do you love best in hearing authors answer?

Jake and Keanu the Cat Rule the Writer's Roost

This week we're talking about our pets here at SFF7. I've been a cat person pretty much my entire life. You can see from a few of the books I read as a child, that I'm not kidding!

Currently I have Jake and Keanu the cat, both rescue cats I adopted from a local shelter when they were 6-8 months old.. I always have two cats at a time so no one is lonely and they have another feline to play with. When I had the old day job this was more important, since I'd be out of the house so much. They romp and have mock fights and chase each other around, after which a thorough mutual bath appears to be required.

Jake is very laid back most of the time but believes he is a house puma and a predator probably ten times larger than he actually is. He's very playful and regularly distracts me from my writing by bringing me all his toys, one at a time, so I can throw them for him to retrieve. He also enjoys watching me fish items from under the refrigerator, where he of course has placed them. Jake is also a very cuddly cat and will sit on my lap and purr (and demand to be petted) whenever I'm sitting in bed reading or watching TV. He doesn't like the cell phone at all and knows when I'm 'cheating', as in not really paying attention to him. He tries to bite it.

He tends to be quite photogenic (although not as much lately - I think he got tired of the camera) and has been in my twitter feed a LOT.

Keanu is more laid back, aloof, doing his own thing, hence the name. We think he had a much rougher time during his life on the streets than Jake did and his tail has a permanent kink from being broken at some point. For a couple of years he never purred and my family's theory was that he never learned, which was sad to contemplate. Then one night I was in bed and I heard this strange rumbling noise and realized it was Keanu! He has a purple hippo pillow on the opposite end of my bed that is HIS, thank you very much, and now he'll knead his claws in the pillow and purr, which is sweet to see. He runs to the door whenever anyone comes to the house, and tries his darnedest to just casually sashay out the door. Where I live there are too many busy streets and too many coyotes to let them try going outside so I can't allow him to make his exit stage left.

My daughters say he doesn't know "how to cat". He tries, and he wants to be petted and be affectionate but his first response when he's had enough is to try to bite you. No other warning at all. Sadly, I have to keep something of a distance from him because of this, after a trip to the ER caused by a bite (broke the skin, left a small scar but no stitches needed but I'm allergic to all antibiotics) but we have worked out a system where I keep a small table next to my office chair and he knows if he jumps up on that I'll pet him as long as he wants. But I have to keep a very close eye on him the whole time and get up and move if he starts to get too wide eyed or is twitching his tail. Too much "crazy cat" demeanor means a bite attempt is coming. Although the one time he actually did bite me there was NO warning.

Oddly enough, Jake is the dominant cat in the house and eats first, and shoves Keanu off the chair next to my desk, which really is Keanu's favorite place.

Jake also believes he is the reincarnation of an ancient Egyptian cat who belonged to a queen and here's the hieroglyphic proof:

So of course when I wrote my story Star Cruise: Stowaway for the Pets In Space anthology, I wrote a cat (along with an alien pet!).

The Pet Post

Once upon a time, I had an Instagram account. Oh, the account is still in my name. You can still search on it and find it. But. It is *my* account only by virtue of the fact that I am the one behind the camera. The account belongs entirely to the cats. There might be a sunset or two in there, I won't lie, but the vast majority of the account is all cats all the time. So allow me to introduce my masters:
This is Autolycus. He's the eldest at 18 (he'll be 18 in March.) He has fully graduated into a Grumpy Old Man cat post here aboard the boat. He's a super high maintenance guy at this point. He suffers from cholangiohepatitis and the early stages of renal failure. This means a grand total of nine different pills per day, plus the need to feed him every few hours. (Part of the liver disease and the fact that elderly felines can't derive the same nutrition from their food as younger cats. So he needs multiple small meals per day to keep his weight up. The other cats are apoplectic with envy.) This means that in order to preserve the quality of this dude's life, one of his humans must remain with him at all times or hire in a pet sitter. The care and feeding of the old dude are labor intensive enough that when my beloved husband heads to Florida for a wedding in the family, I will remain behind to look after the Little Orange Terror pictured here.  Why go to all this trouble? Two reasons. 1. Taking responsibility for a life isn't a convenience. It's a trust that goes beyond what's easy. There's a saying among animal people: You EARN an old cat (or dog). 2. Because this photo:

He is super sweet and he honestly appreciates every effort we make on his behalf. He's worked out that his pills make him feel better. So while he dislikes taking them, he sits still and allows me to pill him. The instant I'm done medicating, he's up and rubbing his face against mine while he purrs.

Why yes. I am a sucker and easily manipulated. Why do you ask?

He is snoring beside me as I type this. I don't know how much longer we get with him, but every second is worth the effort.

Then there's Cuillean, the middle child. She's a little camera shy. Getting a good photo of her is hard. She seems to thing the camera is a predator looking right at her. For that reason, her photo is about three years old. Appropriately captioned: All yer pizza R belong to Cuillean.

She lives for a warm pizza box to claim for her very own. She's my lap warmer and is the cat most likely to come sit with me while I work. She has a champion purr and radiates more body heat than any cat I've ever known.

She's also exquisitely skilled at human training. She went through a protracted training program with my husband - sitting on his workout bag each morning while he was trying to pack it. He would encourage her to move with "If you sit on my bag, you get pets!" Being the shy gal she is, he'd assumed that would get her off his workout bag. It worked. Twice. And then she had him. The pets became the point. Eventually, she got him wrapped around her paws so much that when the alarm goes off in the mornings, she appears. He is expected to pet her until she flops over on her side and kneads his ribcage while she drools in bliss.

Our youngest is also the queen of the castle. This is Hatshepsut.

The rumors are true. This is one who decided that me being away for a week was unacceptable. She escaped the boat and went into hiding. This resulted in an emergency flight home on my part a day after I'd gotten to Florida. It was January. I got one day of warm before having to fly home in a panic to look for a cat in 20 something degree weather. I didn't find her. I'd given up looking for the day, was feeding the other two, and from the cockpit came a piteous 'mew?' She'd come home on her own after driving an entire neighborhood crazy with looking for her. Now, when (if) I go away for any length of time, she is shipped, under house arrest to my mother's back room to be locked away until I return.

This is the one who is most guilty of adding edits to my works in progress. She takes my attention to anything or anyone but HER very, very badly. She's also the one who rushes to park on my chest in concern when I'm flattened by a migraine. Kitty purr. Very therapeutic.

Then. Because I live on a boat, there are the random 'pet' encounters. There's the Not My Cat Who Is On My Boat (and MY cats are screaming threats at him):

And there's the crow who seems to want to be my pet. She comes straight to me, follows me when I walk down the dock, stands on the dinghy rack staring into the boat to see if I'm here and noticing her. She expects (and gets) whatever cat food scraps the felines leave. I assume someone else trained her to expect to be fed - because she showed up at my boat with clear expectation and no fear of me. At one point, she learned how to meow to get my attention. O_o Or maybe it was to mock the cats. I'm not clear. But every year, she brings me her hatchlings, who never stay - she teaches them to come to me for food, but once they're grown, they bolt and never come back. Not that I mind. One crow with entitlement issues is more than enough, thanks.

No matter how you slice it. My life is ruled by animals. It always has been. Half the time, they show up in my books as characters. And whenever something diabolical happens in one of my stories, it's probably because one of the cats thought it up first and tried it out. My monsters are a lot of work, but boy, are they worth it.

Does Not Having Pets Hurt a Writing Career?

One thing frequently talked about among writers, especially at any con, is managing one's social media presence.  How do you get people to be interested in you?

And the regular answer is: take pictures of your pets.  The internet will always get invested in your cats, dogs and other domesticated cuteness.

Here's the problem.  I don't have any.  

For the most part, that's because I really can't have any.  I mean, YES, I could, but... my time is already heavily accounted for and managing my time wisely is a tough challenge.  I can't add "take care of another living" thing into that.  It wouldn't be fair to the pet.  I think that's important-- if you don't have the time or capacity to be a good Pet Parent, you shouldn't be one.  

But people love those pictures on their twitter-feed, though.  Ah, well.

Instead, I just need to keep writing.  And so many things to write!  Seriously, I revamped my writing To-Do Lists a week or so ago, and it's a lot.  So I'll get back to it.

Bela {bey-LA}

She is also (sometimes) called Pook, Pookie or Pook-a-hontas, but don't you DARE call her Bella. {gag me} She is Bela, as in Bela Lugosi, and if you ring my doorbell she will make you think she's coming through the door to eat your face.

posing for Yule pictures

We found her at a no-kill shelter when she was about nine months old, by their surmising of her teeth. She's been the floor-pillow for my boys, the reason we go for walks, and the reason we sometimes hastily clear the room for over ten years now. I've seen her catch and kill small vermin and -impressively- a few ground hogs. I've seen her mope when the boys go to their dads. 

When mom moved in, I worried this big dog might knock her down the steps, but they established a 'dog-goes-first' rule and they regularly went outside together, especially when my mom would say, "Let's go smoke, Bela." Since moving north, Bela has missed mom...but she visited this past weekend. And yesterday, Bela laid in the floor of my guest room from the time the bus ran {i.e. when Thomas left for school} until it was time for it to bring him home. 

She misses my mom. If you add up dog years, they're comparable --if spunky-- old ladies. (:

her spot in my office

 FUN FACT: Bela hates treadmills.

her badass sweater 

  

FUN FACT: Bela loves bread and stinky cheese.

her spot in the living room

FUN FACT: Bela once nearly toppled a grooming table 

freaking out over getting her nails clipped.

she was both the bridesmaid and the groomsman at our wedding

FUN FACT: Bela is believed to be part Rottweiler, 

part Black Labrador, and part German Shepherd or Chow 

because of the spots on her tongue.

of course she only wanted food

this was her pose for the group shots

She has been with me longer than I have been published. 

She's been at my feet nearly every time I write.

So she is definitely part of my process, 

what with her quiet snores and her keen ability 

to force me to forego my sedentary ways 

for short periods of time. {wink, wink}

Release Day: @JeffeKennedy's The Forests of Dru

Today, we're celebrating our Sunday captain Jeffe Kennedy's launch of the latest in her High Fantasy series The Sorcerous Moons! This week's topic is all about our pets, and while Chuffta would strenuously object to being referred to as a "pet," there is no doubt Princess Oria would be lost without her little dragon sidekick.

THE FORESTS OF DRU
An Enemy Land

Once Princess Oria spun wicked daydreams from the legends of sorceresses kidnapped by the barbarian Destrye. Now, though she’s come willingly, she finds herself in a mirror of the old tales: the king’s foreign trophy of war, starved of magic, surrounded by snowy forest and hostile strangers. But this place has secrets, too—and Oria must learn them quickly if she is to survive.

A Treacherous Court

Instead of the refuge he sought, King Lonen finds his homeland desperate and angry, simmering with distrust of his wife. With open challenge to his rule, he knows he and Oria—the warrior wounded and weak, the sorceress wrung dry of power—must somehow make a display of might. And despite the desire that threatens to undo them both, he still cannot so much as brush her skin.

A Fight for the Future

With war looming and nowhere left to run, Lonen and Oria must use every intrigue and instinct they can devise: to plumb Dru’s mysteries, to protect their people—and to hold fast to each other. Because they know better than any what terrifying trial awaits…

BUY IT NOW:   Amazon   |   iTunes   |   Kobo   |  Smashwords

I have no pets.

I know that I'm supposed to show pictures of my pets here, but I have none. Instead, I will simply cut and paste a story about the last pet that I had. I still miss the little guy.


Dinner For One: Part Twenty-Eight “Sanity and happiness are an impossible combination.” –Mark Twain“Only love lets us see normal things in an extraordinary way.” –Author UnknownAs I write this I’ve turned in the latest rewrites on two rather long short stories, resubmitted a series proposal to my agent and have also spent the better part of the last week working the day job without a break. This is my first day off in a while. As you might have guessed, I don’t really do days off very well. There’s not much to them for me. I do the day job and I work: I stay at home and I work. There are exceptions, of course, but not really that many.  That’s okay. I’ve always been a bit of a workaholic. Okay, maybe not always, but since I met Bonnie at the very least. It’s not that I don’t like having fun. I do. I happen to find the notion of having fun high on my list of things I like, in fact, but I don’t always have the same definitions as a lot of people around me. I genuinely enjoy both the day job and the writing. They both help pay my bills, and as an added bonus, the retail gig at Starbucks lets me get out of the house and meet people. Without that one I’d very likely be a hermit.In the morning I will be burying another pet. One of my very rare exceptions and a constant companion for several years. This time around a very special little fellow whose formal name was “Donnie Ducko.” He was named, rather tongue-in-cheek, by Bonnie after the movie we’d watched about a week before, Donnie Darko. As you might have guessed by the name, he was another duck. He was also raised by us from the time he was one day old or less, and he was a bit unique. His nickname was Little Bit, because, of course, he was just a little bit of fluff when we got him.
While we were at the park one day, handling the feeding and care of Bonnie’s adopted masses and keeping them from the road, a man came up with a small blue bucket and asked if we knew anything about baby ducks. Said bucket contained heavily chlorinated pool water and one very tiny duckling. Bonnie immediately said yes. Long story short, we adopted another duck. In this case he’d been caught on the filter door of a swimming pool that had just been bleached. He was caught on the door. His five siblings were pulled into the filtration system and drowned.
Little Bit was not waterproof. The chlorine from the pool had stripped most of his new-hatched glands and he would never be properly waterproof. He was also agoraphobic, and so was an indoor duck.For around nine years he’s been my constant companion. For the last couple of years we mourned Bonnie together, two bachelors in a house with too many rooms and too much junk.
And he is gone. I have no doubt whatsoever that he is winging his way to Bonnie even as I write this. I will miss him very much and I already miss him enough to leave me feeling a little punch-drunk again.
I am remembering in particular a time about five months before Bonnie passed away. As I have said on more than one occasion I was often astounded by her strength: with everything she was going through she kept her good spirits by and large and she fought hard to keep herself alive.  But on that particular night, just as I was putting Little Bit to bed (in his cage in the bathroom, where he could not get into any mischief) I came out and she had tears in her eyes.
Naturally I asked what was wrong. Bonnie looked at me and shook her head and said, “I just love him so much and it kills me to think that he won’t be around as long as me. I don’t think I could take it if he died.” What could I do or say? I held her and reminded her that he would not have even been alive if not for her, and that whatever time he had in the world was a blessing. She cried a bit more and said she knew she was being silly. I told her she wasn't being silly at all. The heart wants what the heart wants, and I have never run across a person who had a good heart that wished to be without their loved ones in this world.
One more reason not to be angry with Bonnie’s passing, I suppose. She did not have the heartbreak of losing her little boy, the closest she truly ever had to a child to call her own.
When I put him in his bath tonight he was quiet and barely swam around. I knew what was coming. As mentioned previously, you get to understand the signs if you look for them. Within an hour he was gone. Nine years, give or take. More than he’d have had in the outside world. Seven years of bringing Bonnie joy every day, even on the rare occasions when she dreaded life without him.
One last time then, I will cry over the loss of a duck. Foolish man that I am, I opened my heart again. It’s almost a guarantee of pain. A promise of suffering to come. I should know that I suppose. Had I a lick of common sense, I would look at the words of Mark Twain that are posted at the top of this particular essay and I would wish desperately to be sane above and beyond all else. Sanity would be wiser, I think. Sanity would mean not opening my heart, not risking my feelings any longer. Not once again testing the human soul’s capacity for grief.
A duck. A waterfowl. A feathered bird that always made Bonnie happier and yes, made the loss of my wife just a tiny bit more tolerable. If sanity and happiness are an impossible combination, than surely sanity and grief must also be impossible. So surely sanity would be the wiser choice.
But there are still people out there who have already won their way past my defenses. And even if I wanted to shut myself off completely from the world, I don’t genuinely believe that would be the wiser thing to do here.
As I write this, a friend of mine is just leaving the hospital with heart troubles. As I write this, another friend is hours or days away from giving birth. As I write this there are people laughing and crying all over the world. As I write this, life is occurring all around us, and death, too. They still go hand in hand, much as I might currently wish for a different end result.
As I write this I find I am once again crying, and trying to find the damned keys on my keyboard past the tears that are blurring my vision. That’s fairly common when I write these particular articles. They deal, unfortunately, with matters of the heart.
As I write this, the logical part of my mind is telling me I’m an ass for crying over a duck and I am gleefully, insanely, telling my mind exactly where it can go and how little I care what logic has to say.Because as I write this, I can remember the sound of Bonnie calling out “Little Bit!” In a loud, joyous voice after we got back from dialysis and I settled her on the bed to rest, and I can also hear the sound of our house duck lifting his head and calling back to her with excitement.
Bonnie was always happy to see her baby boy. And Little Bit, the silly little duck we rescued from a very certain death, the waterfowl who we took home and raised and kept and fed, who spent part of each night on the bed between us and who liked eating lettuce shreds almost as much as he liked throwing them across the room when he was eating them, he was always happy to see his momma. It may not have been a biological thing, but there was most decidedly love and joy between the two of them.
I’m a romantic. I asked him to tell his momma I said hi and that I love her and miss her.
I suspect she already knows.
It is what it is.
  

Meet the Pets!

Check out the awesome cover for the fourth Sorcerous Moons book!! It releases Tuesday, January 24, but you can preorder at a few retailers. The blurb:

An Enemy Land

Once Princess Oria spun wicked daydreams from the legends of sorceresses kidnapped by the barbarian Destrye. Now, though she’s come willingly, she finds herself in a mirror of the old tales: the king’s foreign trophy of war, starved of magic, surrounded by snowy forest and hostile strangers. But this place has secrets, too—and Oria must learn them quickly if she is to survive.

A Treacherous Court

Instead of the refuge he sought, King Lonen finds his homeland desperate and angry, simmering with distrust of his wife. With open challenge to his rule, he knows he and Oria—the warrior wounded and weak, the sorceress wrung dry of power—must somehow make a display of might. And despite the desire that threatens to undo them both, he still cannot so much as brush her skin.

A Fight for the Future

With war looming and nowhere left to run, Lonen and Oria must use every intrigue and instinct they can devise: to plumb Dru’s mysteries, to protect their people—and to hold fast to each other. Because they know better than any what terrifying trial awaits…

****************

This week on the blog, we're featuring the pets of the SFF Seven.

(Or ferns, in some cases, maybe. Or the neighbor's pet - we shall see!)

Here at Chez Kennedy, we have two semi-famous pet residents. At any rate, pics of my Maine coon cats get more attention than posts about my books a lot of the time.

Not that I'm jealous.

Much.

Okay, I'm not bothered at all because Jackson and Isabel bring light and love into our lives. They're an integral part of my and David's day to day. 

Isabel is the older kitty. In fact, tomorrow, January 23, is her eleventh birthday!! Happy birthday, Isabelly!! I'm not saying I sing to my cats, but if I did, my song for her might be to the tune of "Cinderelly" from the Disney version and goes "Isabelly, Isabelly, she's a beauty, Isabelly." She is, too. She's a blue smoke, and does look blue in some lights. She also has a lovely smile. 

Jackson is our tuxedo boy. He turns five this year in March, and tends to get more press because he's always getting into trouble. Where Isabel is all about Zen grace, Jackson is irrepressible. Just yesterday I found him hanging out by the bouquet of lilies - with orange pollen all over the white of his muzzle. He just HAD to stick his face in the flowers. (Don't worry - he didn't eat any. Neither of them are plant-chewers.)