1.) When did you first consider yourself a writer?
A.) When I was fifteen. That's when I decided I was going
to be serious about it, and that serious about it meant finishing stories I
started and then submitting them, and resubmitting them when they got rejected,
which at first was, naturally, always. I first wanted to write when I was
in the third grade. I was already reading way above grade level, and was
fascinated by words. I started learning how to put words together then,
in the third grade. Got some attention for my writing in elementary
school, but it was when I was fifteen that I got, as I said, serious.
2.) What is the hardest part of writing?
A.) Liking the story after it's done. Not being totally
in despair at how bad it is once it's there in print or online. Very
rarely do I like anything I have written. I always see what I wanted to
be there, but isn't.
3.) How did you feel upon publication of your first
completed project?
A.) Excited, but I had no
one to be excited with me or for me. My parents had no clue of what I was
trying to do, or how important it was to me. I found the acceptance
letter when I came home from high school. My mother and aunt were there
-- they looked at me, nodded, made some casual comment, and went back to their
conversation. I went back to my high school, running part of the way, in
order to catch my English teacher, Mrs. Weiland, to show her, because I thought
she would understand. But by the time I got there, she was gone for the
day. The next day I showed her the acceptance letter, and she was really
happy for me. But by then my own excitement had faded...:-) Mrs.
Weiland died young, only a year or so after I graduated. I wish I could
have shown her Shiny Thing.
4.) In addition to writing, what else are you
passionate about?
A.) I am not quite sure how I'm going to interpret 'passionate'
in this answer. I am angry about a lot of things. I can get very up
in people's faces when health and safety issues are involved. I believe
that the greatest good is to reduce pain. So perhaps I am passionate
about that -- in a violent, aggressive way...:-) If passionate means,
'what do you really like' -- well, Doctor Who, and the band New Model Army.
5.) If you could ask any author, living or dead, one
question, what would it be?
A.) I don't know if I would ask anybody anything.
("Dear Mr. Dickens, so what the hell was the ending of The Mystery of
Edwin Drood supposed to be?" :-) I might want to tell a couple
of people something. Like Emily Dickinson -- that her work would be not
only remembered and honored, but that people would be amazed by her
genius. (Not that she would believe it.) Or Keats -- No, man, your
name was not writ in water.
If I can stray from writers to
artists (though she counts as both), I would ask Emily Carr, the Canadian
artist, something: How? How did you do it? How did you
suddenly make that cognitive leap late in your life and do work that was so
much more than the work you did when you were younger? She is one of the
few examples I can think of of creative people where that happened. -- Of
course, she would say, "I don't know. It just happened."
Being of a certain age myself, I keep hoping for that cognitive leap...
Shiny Thing blurs the lines between fantasy, horror and science fiction. The stories inside are suffused with magic and danger, and will sometimes chill you to the bone. With a delicate touch Patricia Russo reveals humanity in all of its foibles and glorious moments, in settings that range from the perfectly average to the absolutely sublime. You can never be quite sure who is the monster and who is the heroine, and sometimes there is no divide. The characters are people you know, yet they do things you would never expect, and within each story there is one shining thing that somehow changes them all. You know the old saying — all that glitters is not gold. Well sometimes, all that is gold does not glitter. In Shiny Thing, your life depends on being able to tell the difference.
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