This one is so hard! I know everyone says that but it really is the most difficult question. I have too many favourites. Since my latest book (with the fabulous Sarah Rees Brennan) is a vampire novel I narrowed the question to my favourite authors of vampire books. Bram Stoker's Dracula was the first vampire novel I ever read. I adored it. I re-read it while Sarah and I were planning Team Human and fell in love with it all over again. It really stands up. My other absolute favourites are Suzy McKee Charnas's The Vampire Tapestry. She's a genius. Everything she writes is wonderful and her opera-loving vampire is one of her best creations. And then there's Jewell Parker Rhodes's The Gilda Stories. Again everything she writes is brilliant. No matter what genre or for what age group. (Bram Stocker, on the other hand, only had one great book in him. The others are, um, underwhelming.)
2.Who has had a major influence on your writing?
My parents. They've supported me (both emotionally and financially) and always been so proud and never let me feel that wanting to be a writer was madness. (Even though it is.)
3.Can you name at least one book that you never finished?
I find it impossible not to finish a book once I've started. No matter how bad. It's a curse.
4.What word or words do you always have trouble spelling?
Sadly, almost all of them. It's the one good thing about using voice recognition software: it can spell much, much better than I can.
5.What three adjectives best describe you?
Hungry, opinionated, clothes-obsessed.
6.Which of your characters would you most like to be and why?
None of them! They're teenagers. I have happily escaped that time of life.
7.Which author would you invite to dinner?
John Arlott, the wittiest and most poetic of all writers on the sacred subject of cricket.
8.Where do you write?
In my office using my ergonomically set up computer and keyboard and track balls, sitting (bouncing, really) on my purple fitness ball. The purpleness is key.
9.When do you write?
Whenever the deadline gets too close.
10.What makes you happy?
Eating and wearing fabulous clothes with my favourite people.
11.What do you most fear?
Interviews. :-)
12.What is your favorite vice?
Gluttony. Or is that a sin?
13.What is the quality you most like in yourself?
My generosity.
14.What are the qualities you most like in your friends?
Their generosity. And their ability to forgive.
15.Would you be lying if you said your works were not autobiographical?
No. But I did write a book called Liar.
16.What part of your personality do you detest?
None. I try to be generous and forgiving of myself.
17.What is your favorite adjective?
Putrescent. It's fun to say yet also gross.
18.What is your favorite book?
My favourite vampire book is Suzy McKee Charnas's The Vampire Tapestry.
19.What book would you read three times?
I re-read all the good ones at least that many times.
20.To whom would you award the Nobel Prize for Literature and why?
Margo Lanagan. Because everything she writes is exquisite and tells a searing story that haunts you for years. I'm haunted by an unpublished novel of hers she never even bothered to finish. Her actual published works are even better.
