Yog's Notebook, blog edition

For our summer issue, we asked each contributor a few questions about their writing and interests. Partial answers appeared on the contributors page, but I thought it would be fun to share their full responses. Check back over the next week (give or take a few days) to see all of the interviews.

Here's what Ms. Kaiser, author of "Back to the Classifieds", had to say:

Q: What's the best thing you've read recently?

A: The Atrocity Archives, by Charles Stross, was probably the most recent book I’ve read that I would unreservedly recommend. But I bet that’ll have changed to something else by the time this is published.

Q: What do you hope the future will be like? Or is there something that was predicted to happen that you wish really had? (jet cars, food pills, or...?)

A: The running joke between my friends and me is “Where’s my flying car?” from all the science fiction of the Golden Age that promised us flying cars by the early nineties (and all we got was this lousy gas crisis), but what I’m really excited about is all the news stories about Mars lately. I mean, water on Mars! Giant cave systems! Every time I read something about it, I feel like I really am living in The Future.

Q: What's lurking under your bed?

A: There is absolutely nothing lurking under my bed. I know this because I check on a regular basis to make sure. As a kid, I used to worry that there were zombies hiding out under there, waiting to grab my ankle with a skeletal hand the second I dangled my foot over the edge of the bed too long. Every night, I took a flying leap into my bed to make sure the zombies couldn’t get me.

Now, as an adult, I realize that’s ridiculous, because, as everyone knows, the monsters are hiding in closets. This is why I cannot sleep unless all closet doors are firmly closed. Leaving them open is just asking for trouble (“trouble” in this case being a euphemism for “being disemboweled”).

Q: Do you have any hobbies or interests outside of writing and sf/horror?

A: I don’t have as many hobbies as I should, because… well… there are so many books. I have a very low resistance to books calling my name. But I rollerblade, make chain mail jewelry, and belly dance. Additionally, I make fantastic bread. It’s a short list, but as I said, you can blame all the publishers who keep putting more books on the shelves for me to buy.

Labels: interview, science fiction, sf, writer