NINE.

1. Fire rages in your house. Everyone is safe, but you. You decide to smash through the window, shielding your face with a book. What is the book?

How to Shield Your Face from Fragmenting Glass, by Miss I. Shards.

2. Asleep in your rebuilt house, you dream of meeting a dead author. But not in a creepy stalkerish way, so you shoo Mr Poe out of the kitchen. Instead, you sit down and have cake with which dead author?

Samuel Beckett. We split Godot's cake. He's not coming.

3. Would you name six essential items for writers? If, you know, cornered and threatened with torture.

Six plots. Shuffle them and see how far you get.

4. Who’d win in a fight between Count Dracula and Frankenstein’s monster? If, you know, you were writing that scene.

Depends on the fight. Pillow? Boxing? Fencing? Black-powder firearms? Origami contest. Tiny daggers and massive shields? Champagne-corkery...

5. It’s the end of a long and tiring day. You are still writing a scene. Do you see it through to the end, even though matchsticks prop your eyelids open, or do you sleep on it and return, refreshed, to slay that literary dragon another day?

I've answered this question after midnight at least...once. That I vaguely recall. No matter the answer, and disregarding the level of tiredness, I save the bloody file.

6. You must introduce a plot-twist. Evil twin or luggage mix-up?

I divert into the unexpected arrival of six sets of twins. Some of whom are non-identical. The identical twins carry non-identical luggage, and the non-identical twins possess luggage unaccountably matched to different non-identical twins. Hilarity slings its backside out of the hammock and joins this party.

7. Let’s say you write a bunch of books featuring an amazing recurring villain. At the end of your latest story you have definitely absitively posolutely killed off the villain for all time and then some. Did you pepper your narrative with clues hinting at the chance of a villainous return in the next book?

Clues? This EVIL URN, containing the villain's ashes? I must not speak of that. The hero's love-interest is the only scholar in town who can read the EVIL INCANTATION on the lid of the EVIL URN. What are you insinuating? My next book's title is THE POSSESSION OF DOCTOR MAUDIE KINKE. Gosh. What happens next?

8. You are at sea in a lifeboat, with the barest chance of surviving the raging storm. There’s one opportunity to save a character, drifting by this scene. Do you save the idealistic hero or the tragic villain?

There's a slight chance that I save the idealistic villain.

9. It’s time to kill a much-loved character – that pesky plot intrudes. Do you just type it up, heartlessly, or are there any strange rituals to be performed before the deed is done?

The much-loved villain must pledge his eternal soul to the care of an EVIL URN.

10. Embarrassing typo time. I’m always typing thongs instead of things. One day, that’ll land me in trouble. Care to share any wildly embarrassing typing anecdotes? If, you know, the wrong word suddenly made something so much funnier. (My last crime against typing lay in omitting the u from Superman.)

I'm running out of anecdotes for this answer. Once, long ago, when the world was young, I switched characters in mid-story. She entered the scene under one name and left it via another. I tried to make it work for me by allowing both women to wander through the scene - but only in my head. On the page, I squelched the wrong name and carried on as if nothing happened.

11. I’ve fallen out of my chair laughing at all sorts of thongs I’ve typed. Have you?

Not lately. Thongs ain't what they used to be.

12. You take a classic literary work and update it by throwing in rocket ships. Dare you name that story? Pride and Prejudice on Mars. That kind of thing.

The Neon Sign of Four.

13. Seen the movie. Read the book. And your preference was for?

In attempting to answer this question yet again, I was sucked into the life of an Amazon movie reviewer. He reviewed just about everything. The man's judgement was sound. He came across as witty and informed. I returned here, to throw myself upon the blade of my own question. There are only so many ways in which to avoid answering. I intend to explore every avenue.

14. Occupational hazard of being a writer. Has a book ever fallen on your head? This may occasionally happen to non-writers, it must be said.

Books falling on the head. Memorable? Hard to say. I feel something else more keenly. An old book lies safe and secure in my hands. Time kills the construction, and a page drifts out. That's akin to words bleeding from the tale.

15. Did you ever read a series of books out of sequence?

Yes. That's fractionally less-complicated than writing them out of sequence.

16. You encounter a story just as you are writing the same type of tale. Do you abandon your work, or keep going with the other one to ensure there won’t be endless similarities?

I've just had this idea for a story about a lawyer who travels to a Transylvanian castle...

17. Have you ever stumbled across a Much-Loved Children’s Classic™ that you’ve never heard of?

Sometimes I've had the misfortune to wade through them.

18. You build a secret passage into your story. Where?

I begin construction three pages before a boring place. Readers, bracing themselves for a spot of waffle, discover a hidden store of treasure.

19. Facing the prospect of writing erotica, you decide on a racy pen-name. And that would be…

Mary Hinge.

20. On a train a fan praises your work, mistaking you for another author. What happens next?

Belatedly, I realise this is another bogus question. How does a fan mistake me for another author? Am I wearing a sign around my neck? Do I walk around on trains holding a book as though I'm plugging the fact that I may just be the author of the tome in question? (Even though I am not.)
   Who would do that? Someone else. But I can always say I'm someone else anyway. Which author do I resemble? Catherine Cookson? I'd need The Mallen Streak for that. No, not a euphemism. There is no disrobing involved in the streak. I fear I have veered from the original questioner's intent.

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