Dracula handles the night-shift, for Stoker tells us the vampire
has the strength of twenty men. Leaving Wonderland, stepping through a looking-glass,
Alice
2. What album do you play when you are depressed that can
be guaranteed to make you feel better?
This question is clearly front-to-back. When I’m in a stormy
mood, I play Verdi’s Requiem. It’s not
designed to make me feel better.
3. You are on a first date with someone that you find attractive.
Your partner picked the restaurant, and it is an ethnic food with which you are
not familiar. When you get the menu you realize that you don’t recognize the names
of any of the dishes and there are no descriptions. What do you do?
I convulse, bending over double under the guise of a fake
sneeze, knocking a gilt-edged monocle into my lap. Recovering, I wave airily at
the menu and utter the immortal lines…
“Could you ordah
for both of us, dahling? I appeah to have left my reading-glasses in the Bayswater
flat.”
4. What character from fiction do you wish that you had invented?
Raider of tombs, Lara Croft. Think of the cash she raked in.
5. Have you ever based a character on that character?
No. Much to my regret. Though if I had, the creation would
have been much to my shame. Tigers are endangered, Lara.
6. How do you backup your work, and how often?
An autosave kicks in periodically. I’ll save a file if I must
leave the keyboard, even for the briefest stretch. Typically, I won’t get through
a paragraph without saving. I’ll save much sooner than that if I type something
vital, complex, or an item that is vital and complex.
Microsoft Word is
set to back up a copy of each file. When the world was younger, I had fiction archives.
Now I have fiction folders inside annual archives.
But that’s basic
management of files, and not backing stuff up. Generally, files are copied to a
mirror archive on an external hard drive once a file is created or added to. Come
the half-way point of the year, I used to create a DVD of the year-thus-far – that
was before I had an external hard drive. The archive is copied to DVD come year’s
end, and the DVD is lodged in a fireproof safe.
That’s all changing
now – I moved to the internet. I follow my own blog via e-mail so that an archived
copy exists in an e-mail folder. Just in case Blogger decides to chew up a few pages.
Now I have the option of cloud storage to mull over.
Electricity let me
down once – by adding data to a file. I was chopping the hell out of a chunk of
writing and the power went. So all the stuff I cut -without saving – was back again
when electricity resumed.
The other form of
backing stuff up is publication. I thoroughly recommend that to writers. Don’t store
your tales in a digital drawer. Publish them. My early blog entries were written
for collection and publication. That’s the ultimate version of backing something
up – putting it out there.
Placing your work
on file at a Library of Record, to fulfil legal obligations, is another way of backing
things up. You can walk into the British Library – between Euston and St. Pancras,
and request access to a digital copy of Neon
Gods Brought Down by Swords, for example.
If you are hard-pressed
and all other methods fail, you must rely on recreating material from memory. This
is a poor solution, but if it’s all you have then make use of what marbles time
has left ye.
7. If you had the power to “uninvent” an existing device and
make sure that it would never be made, what would it be?
I would uninvent the Uninventotron™, an insidious device which
makes possible the act of uninventing existing devices. People, bless their hearts,
hate everything. If you handed a universal wiper to someone with the loftiest of
intentions, we’d all be mired in our own blood mere seconds later. Using the Uninventotron™
to uninvent the Uninventotron™ would not be done out of lofty intentions. Low morals
come into it.
8. If your life was a sandwich, what would it be?
It would be lying in the middle of an icy road, dieseled up,
with a tyre-tread through the pickles. Come on. How many people are going to write
HERO SANDWICH …
9. What song from a Broadway musical best describes your ideal
relationship?
Sondheim or non-Sondheim?
10. If you could choose a pet that was a reincarnation of
a historical figure, who would it be, and what sort of pet?
After removing sick, sad, twisted answers to this question,
I’m left with nothing but a sick, sad, twisted smile.
11. A comic book superhero approaches you for help in defeating
a villain. Who is the character, and how are you able to help?
Too Much Coffee Man.
12. If three were four, what would five be?
Three are what’s left of the Fantastic Four when Ben Grimm
leaves in the huff to join the circus. When Ben returns, the Fantastic Four become
five once Sue gives birth to her first kid.
13. If you had the power to make everyone on Earth read one
book (not your own) what would you pick?
With great power comes great responsibility. If I refrain
from using that power, people will read more than one book.
14. If you were a professional wrestler, what would your ring
name be?
Darth Sumo.
15. Would you rather have an action figure or a Pez dispenser
based on you?
I’ve yet to see a dispenser come with its own DEATH STAR THRONE ROOM, so I plump for the
former.
16. What one superpower would make you a better writer?
Exposure to Writeronium would grant me the power to type faster
than the speed of cliché.
17. If you could spend one day living in the world of a movie,
what movie would it be? What would you spend the day doing?
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. I’d studiously avoid falling into
pools which contain golden items.
18. What one emotion more than any other would you like your
readers to experience while reading your books?
Incarnadine, which, for the purposes of this answer, is an
emotion.
19. If you could send one object that you own to your ten
year old self, what would it be?
Kyle Reese, who would help me defeat the internet – preventing
the posting of these answers.
20. If you could live anywhere on Earth, where would it be?
It would be orbiting the sun, where it is now.
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