rushthatspeaks | 5 questions answered

Questions from

nedlum. If you want me to ask you questions, you can ask, but I do not promise anything. This turned out to be a good introduction-to-me sort of post, I think.

1. I realize this shows me to be a compete mono-normative (is that a word? It seems like a reasonable extrapolation from heteronormative, but it's sort of ambiguous), but reading your profile left me a bit curious. Is the "boyfriend" a third, more-or-less equal partner, a fuck-buddy, or a "boyfriend" in the same way that the people one would gossip with are your "girlfriends"?

Secondary partner. My wife and I are married, and we've been dating B. for good gods over two years now (it never seems that long). It's like the difference between 'spouse' and 'boy/girlfriend' generally, I think, although we are definitely keeping B. for the long haul. I still call myself a lesbian, even though I take flack about that from the purists, but culturally and temperamentally and habitually and in patterns of attraction I *am* a lesbian, and dating a boy hasn't changed that.

2. I've little doubt that the idea of "favorite books" is probably as meaningless to you as it is for most people. But still: if we were in a well-stocked book store, who or what would you probably be shoving into my arms?

John Crowley. Greil Marcus's Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century, which really is what it says it is. A beginner's introduction to How Manga Can Be Good, probably including Monster by Naoki Urasawa, Mushishi by Yuki Urushibara, and Fruits Basket by Natsuki Takaya. David Mack's Kabuki graphic novels. Diana Wynne Jones. Peter S. Beagle. Greer Gilman. Angela Carter. LeGuin's Always Coming Home, and her criticism. Joanna Russ. Lovecraft. This is pretty much my list of Things I Do Not Want To Live Without, slightly truncated because I can go on and on and on and bloody on.

3. Your userpic. Who *is* that?

It's from an anime called Hunter X Hunter, which is probably not objectively that good but which I find very endearing and which saved my sanity in college during the final semester of my senior year. I imprinted on it like whoa. The picture is of Killua, who is, in no particular order, an assassin trying to escape his scary family, a video game fan, the protagonist's best friend, and twelve years old. He is my favorite character. His family trains falcons to hunt people, which is where the icon comes from.

4. Speaking of guitars, what kind of music are you into?

Just about anything, really, but I tend to find myself buying original-wave punk (X-Ray Spex, Liliput, the Clash, the Adverts), female-fronted goth-rock (the Gathering, Inkubus Sukkubus), disturbing folk music (June Tabor, Waterson/Carthy, Kate Rusby) and feminist folk and rock (Dar Williams, the Indigo Girls, Tori Amos, you get the idea). The last CD that came into the house was the soundtrack to Black Snake Moan. The most played song on my playlist is Dave Carter and Tracey Grammer's 'Tanglewood Tree', followed closely by Lal Waterson's 'Midnight Feast'. The song I've been listening obsessively to on repeat lately is Bruce Springsteen's 'Worlds Apart', which goes with my in-progress novel. The last group I saw in concert was the Dresden Dolls.

5. What's the word count on the longest bit of fiction you've got on your hard drive (finished or work in progress), and how long have you been writing it?

My novel in progress, Altarwise by Owl-Light, is somewhere around 12-13,000 words, and is the longest thing I've had going since I started thinking about things like plot (when I was a small child I filled endless notebooks with 'and then cool thing x, and then cool thing y', disregarding whether said things could even be in the same universe or happen to the same people). There's maybe the same again in pre-writing. It's been going about a year. I write in extremely fast spasms followed by long periods of waffling, and have learned that if I try to force writing during said waffling I kill whatever it is I have going pretty damn fast and very thoroughly dead. This is why I do not expect ever to make a living from my writing. I am at this point selling everything I finish, but there just isn't enough of it to live on. With the exception of the currently-making-the-rounds poem, I've sold everything that I consider finished that I've written since I was eighteen years old, and you can see from my userinfo how much that is. (I have another poem should be finished in a couple of weeks. I can't remember how long it's been since I had two things making the rounds at once...)

The longest piece I've sold, 'The Crying Queen', is about 9,500 words. I probably have about 15,000 words either published or upcoming at this point, and the total income from that is in the low three digits.

My hopeful projection for a first draft of Altarwise is two years, but that may be optimistic. I have two short stories and three poems going concurrently as well, and another six novels lined up for later.