TCL’s Countdown Questions #7: Author Alma Alexander.

An Alternative Author Interview:

TCL’s Countdown Questions.

These are the questions I’m asking authors to answer, as I think they’ll give insight into them as people, as well as who they are as writers:

• If you could visit five (5) places you’ve never been, where would you go and why?
• Name four (4) foods or dishes that you enjoy so much that they’ve practically become part of your personality.
• There is the past, the present, and the future – if you could choose, which of these three (3) would you prefer to live in, and why?
• Best and worst – you choose which – name two (2) of either your best moments of your life, worst moments of your life, or one of each.
• Name one (1) book you’ve read in the past year (or so) that you wish you had written, and why.

This week I’m featuring my “internet friend,” the Fantasy author Alma Alexander.

Yet again, here’s someone I “met” through the usenet message board misc.writing. Although we’ve never met in person, and Alma writes in a genre that I don’t generally read, I have read one book she wrote, together with the man she later married, Deck Deckert, “Letters from the Fire” which was (we believe) the first email epistolary novel ever written!

 

• If you could visit five (5) places you’ve never been, where would you go and why?

The Antarctic – although it may already be too late for that – because it is literally the navel of the world. I really would like to see that before it becomes a memory and a dream.

Patagonia, because it’s one of the last wild places of the earth.

Istanbul, because I wrote a novel set in Constantinople and I would love to burrow into the historical crevices of the place and see how much of what I wrote about survives.

The Great Wall of China and those magnificent misty Chinese landscapes of crags rising over the river in deepending twilight while a fisherman poles a small boat over shadowed waters.

… and dammit – does it HAVE to be real? (TCL: of course not!) – Tigana, from the book of the same name by Guy Gavriel Kay. Because in some strange transcendental way that country has become part of my heart.

• Name four (4) foods or dishes that you enjoy so much that they’ve practically become part of your personality.

Cherries – I can eat an entire bowl at a sitting and not even notice. Chocolate – the rich dark stuff, not the sweeet milk chocolate and definitely not the “white” choc which I don’t even believe to be truly chocolate at all (TCL: I’ve taught you right!). Crème brûlée which I will have as dessert at any restaurant that offers it. And finally – which comes as no surprise to anyone who knows me – coffee. I am a certified addict, and I have just enough blood in my coffeestream to qualify as a human being. it HAS been suggested that I simply stick an IV into my arm and mainline the stuff. I certainly can’t write without it.

• There is the past, the present, and the future – if you could choose, which of these three (3) would you prefer to live in, and why?

My husband often tells me that I already live too much in both the past (in dream and memory) and in the future (worst-case-scenario panics, anxiety) – and that I have no idea how to live in the present moment. But no, I won’t choose I can’t choose I am pulled in both directions – by an odd remembrance and recognition of times past and by curiosity about the future. It’s not truly comfortable standing here with one foot in each and hovering awkwardly above the middle ground – but that’s where I am…

• Best and worst – you choose which – name two (2) of either your best moments of your life, worst moments of your life, or one of each.

One of the best: having one or my poems chosen by NASA to feature on a commemorative poster for the Mercury 13, the 13 women who trained as astronauts in the dawn of the space age although they didn’t get to go into space. It was one of the proudest moments of my life. I myself will probably never go into space – but my words are part of the stars. I still shiver and hug myself when I think of that.

The worst moments of my life involve saying goodbye, when the time comes, to fur-family. I’ve got three cats and three dogs waiting across the rainbow bridge right now, and one of them… one of them was a hard hard hard decision, he was my shadow, the cat of my heart, and I had to let him go when he was barely nine years old. There was no choice and when I meet him again I hope he forgives me for it. I still have a guilty feeling as though I should have tried harder, done more for him. But there was nothing I could do, and it broke me. It broke my heart.

• Name one (1) book you’ve read in the past year (or so) that you wish you had written, and why.

Overstory, which was an AMAZING AMAZING book, and a love story to trees, and I am a notorious tree hugger myself and this book was just luminous. It went on to critical and reader acclaim, fully deserved; it was an astonishing book, and so much love and pain and epiphany lies between its covers that I am really in awe of the mind and heart and spirit that produced it. Lyrical writing, amazing characters, and forests that come to life. I hope one day to accomplish something as monumental.

Thanks Alma! You are absolutely right – that “white” stuff should not be called chocolate! (Send my love to Deck, please!)

Who is Alma?

A writer by profession

A scientist by education

A duchess by historical accident

I was born on the banks of the Danube in a country that no longer exists, grew up in Africa and am now married to an American who wooed me over the Internet. We live in the cedar woods of the Pacific Northwest, along with the obligatory two writers’ cats, and assorted visiting wildlife.

My books include the internationally acclaimed historical fantasy The Secrets of Jin-shei published in 13 language, and its follow-up, Embers of Heaven, set in a fantasy China.

VOYA suggested that my Worldweavers series (Gift of the Unmage, Spellspam, Cybermage, Dawn of Magic) might be just the thing “for readers suffering Harry Potter withdrawal.“

Another series, The Were Chronicles (Random, Wolf, Shifter), which dramatically changes the Were world, is about to be republished,

Other fantasies include the haunting and newly republished Midnight at Spanish Gardens, as well as Changer of Days, Wings of Fire, Empress, and a humorous science fiction novel, AbductiCon. I have edited two anthologies, River and Children of a Different Sky.

More on all of my books – and links for buying them – can be found under the pull-down menu MY BOOKS at the top of my website page.

https://twitter.com/AlmaAlexander
https://www.facebook.com/AuthorAlmaAlexander/
https://www.patreon.com/AlmaAlexander?ty=h