Chatting from Paris

Hands down, Jessa Crispin's Bookslut.com is my favorite book news/commentary site. Detractors claim Jessa's blog is snarky. I think she's pragmatic and usually right. Anyway, loving the site like I do, it's big fun for me to be one of their interviews this month.

The interviewer was Jessa's sister Jen Crispin, who I'm a big fan of because she's written flattering reviews of all my books (I'm easy like that). It's rare, too, to have a reviewer who actually gets what's you're trying to do. So, you know, the whole Crispin family is basically aces in my book.

Anyway, we did this by email, and I was in Paris at the time. Here's how my side of the conversation started:

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"Hello from Paris, where I’m answering these questions. The weather is milder over here this week than at home in Pennsylvania, and for that I’m thankful. The weather and the foie gras, thankful for both. And I saw Jeanette Winterson today. Not in a “we shared witty conversation and a bottle of wine at a small table overlooking the Seine” kind of way, but in a “I walked into Shakespeare & Co. wondering what the line was about and there she was, signing books.” Unable to browse the stacks because of her line, I wandered over to Notre Dame just in time to have the guard lock the gate on me. A wrinkled little pear of a street woman saw my defeat and showed me how to get in through the Exit, so she got my 5 Euros directly, rather than me having to pass it through God’s hands first. Okay, let’s answer questions."
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We go on from there to talk about In Hoboken, my other books, Silas House, singing with Woody Guthrie's sister, Stephen King, and the Dragonriders of Pern. It's all here.