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Drift Wood
1. I imprinted on The Princess Bride at a very young age. I suspect you can guess which character made the biggest impression on me when I say that I went on to study both fencing and Spanish. To this day, I can’t tell you what my favorite book or favorite song is -- that’s too conditional on my mood and the situation -- but The Princess Bride is my favorite movie, hands down. I lost count of how many times I’d seen it somewhere north of seventy-five, and can more or less recite it from memory.
2. I used to be an archaeologist. I still know where my trowel is, too! (Which makes me the archaeological equivalent of a hoopy frood.) In college I majored in archaeology and folklore, and though I switched to cultural anthropology and folklore in graduate school, I’ve worked on a number of projects in England, Israel, and Indiana.
3. I practice shōrin-ryu karate. For about eleven years now, and I hope to test for my second degree black belt soon. Also, thanks to my fencing teacher in high school also teaching us the basics of stage combat, I used to do combat choreography for theatre during college.
4. I desperately wish I had a cat. My husband is allergic, and I tell him it’s a mark of how much I love him that I married him anyway. I grew up with a cat; my parents got her when I was three and she lived to be sixteen and a half, so I don’t remember a time when I lived at home and there wasn’t a cat there. The day they successfully engineer cats that don’t produce the allergen, I will have a cat fifteen seconds later.
5. I grew up in Texas. All in the same house, too, from the day I came home from the hospital until I left for college. I have an interesting relationship with my home state; I haven’t lived there for more than twenty years, and many aspects of its politics are anathema to me, but I will fight you if you try to say that makes me not Texan. Which, I suppose, is proof that I am.
6. I’m a language dilettante. The only thing I’m fluent in is English, my native tongue, but I’ve studied Spanish, Latin, Japanese, Irish Gaelic, and Old Norse -- not counting two weeks apiece of Finnish and Navajo. I like languages; I find them interesting.
7. Diana Wynne Jones inspired me to become a writer. She was a British children’s and YA fantasy author, and when I finished reading her novel Fire and Hemlock, I remember thinking “I want to be a writer.” I was about nine or ten at the time, and while it took me until college to get serious and until graduate school to sell my first novel, my path really was set that day.