Flashback! A Q&A With Pooks
This is another blast from the past as I rebuild the site. It was Day Two of the blog tour for This Crumbling Pageant and I was given a really fun Q&A by Maureen McGowan over on Get Lost in a Story.
GET TO KNOW PATRICIA
MAUREEN: Where do you most like to read and how often?
PATRICIA: I have a comfy chair with a ratty old footstool to put my feet on. It’s probably my favorite place to read, but you know what? I’m more likely to read in bed. Of course, I also have a Kindle app and an iBooks app on my iPhone so I’ll read standing in line at the supermarket, in waiting rooms, on storm chases with the Resident Storm Chaser [aka husband], at stoplights…
MAUREEN: What’s your favorite kind of story to get lost in?
PATRICIA: Make me bleed. Make me laugh. Make me gasp. Make me sigh. I want to feel something—everything—when I read. If the book is set in England? That’s sheer perfection!
MAUREEN: Where in the world would you most like to visit?
PATRICIA: I’m embarrassed to admit—England. Why is that embarrassing? Because I’ve been five times, and people always tease me about not going anywhere new. This year we went to Ireland! Loved it! And loved Wales and Scotland, too. But still… England. I feel at home there. I breathe more easily and sleep more soundly, and my soul feels like it’s at home there.
HOWEVER!
I would love to spend two weeks in the Greek Isles.
MAUREEN: What are you working on now?
PATRICIA: The Dead Shall Live, Volume Two of the Fury Triad.
MAUREEN: What’s the best vacation you’ve ever been on?
PATRICIA: Oh wow, now I am really going to be boring. But it is a tie between camping [in tents!] in Rocky Mountain National Park with my family, one of the several times we’ve been or… [brace yourself for the shock]–
The two weeks we spent in a tiny fishing village on the coast of Cornwall. We hardly ventured more than twenty miles away, some days not even five miles, during the entire stay. Our cottage was quaint, complete with a view of the sea out the front window.
We ate at pubs, at cafés, tramped up and down the coastal paths with waves crashing below us and warning signs about the snakes everywhere [and I’m afraid of snakes]; a Romany woman stopped me on the street and read my palm; we flew in a tiny airplane to the Isles of Scilly [so tiny the door opened like a car door and we slid across the seat just like a car, and the two of us filled the entire seat!] and—it was just sublime. We were relaxed, happy, and I would go back in a heartbeat.
MAUREEN: Oh, that looks beautiful! Cats or dogs?
PATRICIA: Dogs!
MAUREEN: Hiking boots or high heels?
PATRICIA: BOTH.
MAUREEN: What was your favorite book when you were twelve?
PATRICIA: A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L’Engle.
MAUREEN: What turns you off like nothing else?
PATRICIA: Bigotry.
MAUREEN: What sound or noise do you love?
PATRICIA: Surf on the beach, especially outside my window when I’m going to sleep. [In Cornwall!] ← Okay that really doesn’t surprise you, does it?
MAUREEN: 🙂 What’s your favorite kind of cheese?
PATRICIA: Brie. Cheddar. Double Gloucester. Wait, why just one? Stilton. Feta. Mozzarella. Wait, don’t stop me, I have more! Parmesa— Okay, I’ll stop. Resentfully, but I’ll stop. 😉
MAUREEN: What’s the coolest thing you’ve ever done to research a book?
PATRICIA: In general—travel. Especially the trips to the UK. But more specifically, I was taken down into a hidden smuggler’s hideout beneath a 500-year-old inn on the coast of Cornwall. I toured the manor house, complete with moat, that was the inspiration for the Furys’ home in The Fury Triad—after I’d already written the first book. It was like stepping into my dreams. And I drove on the left side of the road! [Okay, that wasn’t research in itself, but it was so fun!]
MAUREEN: Who’s your favorite villain?
PATRICIA: Severus Snape. Norman Bates. Maleficent. [And the Maleficent that terrified me as a child.]
MAUREEN: Oooo. Good ones! What’s the most romantic thing anyone ever did for you?
PATRICIA: I was sixteen. He was eighteen. When I thought he didn’t even like me, he took a cigarette out of my hand and said he never wanted to see me with one again. He cared! Fist pump! [Reader, I married him.] [Eventually.] [Still married.]
MAUREEN: If you could interview one person (and it doesn’t have to be a writer) who would it be?
PATRICIA: Angelina Jolie.
MAUREEN: What was your favorite subject in school and why?
PATRICIA: Theater. [You have to ask? I am the original drama queen!]
MAUREEN: Did you belong to a clique in high school? Which one of the standard high school stereotypes did you best fit in to?
PATRICIA: Remember My So-Called Life, and how Angela is kind of all over the place, not sure who she is, with a foot in every group? Yeah. That.
MAUREEN: Oh, me too! Do you read reviews of your books? If so, do you pay any attention to them, or let them influence your writing?
PATRICIA: I do read reviews. I do pay attention to them. I love reviews, and knowing that somebody cared enough about something I wrote to take time to say something about it. I read every single review, if I know it exists. And I do try to learn from of them, though sometimes the only thing to be learned is that not every book can be every reader’s cup of tea.
MAUREEN: What does it mean to love someone?
PATRICIA: To love them not just because, but to love them even though.
MAUREEN: What color would you make the sky if it wasn’t going to be blue anymore and why?
PATRICIA: Purple! Because, well, purple! OMG, what a question, and now I am longing for a purple sky!
MAUREEN: What’s your idea of a perfect Sunday afternoon?
PATRICIA: The Dallas Cowboys winning the Super Bowl. Again. 😉
MAUREEN: Which era would you most like to have lived in and why? Least?
PATRICIA: I have thought about this for several days, and there is only one answer. Today. I love living today. I love living in a time with Kindles and internet and cell phones [even when you’re tramping along the coastal paths in County Cork, Ireland]. I love that this world has gotten smaller, that I have friends who range in age from teens to 80s, and it doesn’t make any difference that some of us live in Australia and others in Greece and others in Japan, because online we are all the same in our shared love of the same books, characters, ideals. I don’t even want to go back one year. The world just keeps getting more amazing, and I am thrilled to be part of it today.
That Cornwall trip I was waxing rhapsodic about? That was researching for Untune the Sky. Yes, I’ve been researching and working and writing a long time on The Fury Triad. But before we get to Cornwall…
The Dead Shall Live has its own secrets, locations, research, and history.
Ireland.
Buckle your seatbelts, folks. This one is going to be a killer ride!
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