Tagged by Crafty Green Poet

illustration from Assemblage

I was amazed and pleased when Crafty Green Poet asked me to take part in The Next Big Thing. 

It works like this: a writer answers ten questions about an upcoming publication and they tag five more writers. Each of these writers answers the ten questions by the following week and they recommend five more writers. It grows, week by week.


Crafty Green Poet has any number  of works of her own published and in progress. I would say that our main connection has been through rabbits, even though she lives in Scotland, the internet has made it possible to for us to be friends and have many mutual rabbity friends. A poet, as the name implies, her Haikus are achingly pungent, so you can imagine that I cannot wait to read her novel, Tidal. You can visit her blog by clicking HERE.

Which leads us on to my answers to the Next Big Thing questions about my works in progress. It is supposed to just be about one work, but I am terribly tempted to say something about the NaNoWriMo novel that I am tapping away at this very month; sometimes I feel like an idiot with a laptop, but I think that may be the whole point. Therefore there will be double entries for the questions. The first one is my completed "book".

What is the title of your new book (s)?

Assemblage

Living WIthout Mathematics  

Where did the idea come from for the book(s)?

Assemblage: I've been carrying the idea for parts of this book around for very a long time, you could say all my life and even before that. It is an intertwining of stories fact and primarily fiction about my family, digging as far back as great grandparents: one set of which are fictional and one factual with fictitious adventures. It is self described as an Autofictionography. Rather than the element of time holding the stories together there are underlying subtle themes, one of which is, of course, rabbits. It is illustrated with photos of rabbits and of my ancestors, as well as some illustrations by my own hand. 

Another from Assemblage

Living Without Mathematics: that's the working title. The basic idea came from being a very small part of a nearby group of environmentally concerned folk whose area is in danger of being Fracked. It's a sort of murder mystery, cop show and nature/environment book rolled into one. Truth be told I don't know really where these ideas come from. I think they will be one thing, but then sitting down and writing them out they turn into something else that is, luckily, more enticing for me to write than my original thought, wouldn't it be terribly dull to write what you had planned?

What genre does your book fall under?
Assemblage, as revealed in the paragraph above is an Autofictionogrpahy.

Living WIthout Mathematics,  would be crime, there are different sorts of crimes in it. 



What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

Assemblage: could only be stop action animation or, in my dreams, animation from the great Hayao Miyazuki

Living Without Mathematics: The main characters are Al Randall, Rado Perez, and Fleur Waterford (not her given name) Al could only be played by Robert Downey Jr: Rado would be quite good with Antonio Banderas. Fleur might just flourish played by Audrey Tautou.

What is the one sentence synopsis of your book(s)?
Assemblage: an interwoven collection of mostly fictional memories.

Living Without Mathematics: Two cops, a women who grew up thinking she was a dog, a dead body and a greedy oil company.
Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

Self published, watch this blog! Assemblage will have a limited printed run available through my Etsy store and will also be downloadable as a Kindle through Amazon.com. I would imagine the same will be true for Living Without Mathematics but not for a year.


How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

A month each of the books were written, are being written, during November of last and htis year. 

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

Good question, I would hate to even begin to compare them with other writers, the brave will have to take an look and tell me.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

The first one, Assemblage, was written during NaNoWriMo at the urgent insistence of another rabbit slave, Bunny Lady. The second, well, it just seemed natural to try again, besides it's annoying having words in one's head all the time.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

There are rabbits is both books, there is cooking and food, there are flawed characters with internal conflicts, and there's some dialog. If you were Alice, you might be somewhat entertained. 

Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, 

`and what is the use of a book,' thought Alice `without pictures or conversation?'

Tea? anyone?

The Writers I’m Tagging

The G-man

Brian Miller

Shakira

Bonnie Koenig

Fumiko Takatsu