An Interview with the "Curious Hearts" Authors!

Buy it HERE!

It's an unprecedented event here, folks. A collaborative interview with the seven authors of Curious Hearts. You can see my review of it HERE. And because of the popularity of my random question, they will EACH get a random question to answer. Kick back, relax, and enjoy some delicious randomness with your coffee!


Welcome, Curious Hearts authors! Some of you I've had here before, and some of you are new to Unwritten, but all of you are talented writers, and thank you for taking the time to be here today. Now, let's get on with the show!


The first question is for Ellen Margret ("Retrograde Travelers") : What is a fashion trend that you used to wear (in the 70s, 80s, etc.) that you would now be embarrassed to wear?


Ellen: I remember the pair of hot pants, bought from a market in the early seventies. I was desperate to get into them but they were too small for me. Just as well because around the same time my Dad had vowed never to take me anywhere again if I wore a mini dress. It just didn't do to show too much leg as far as he was concerned.

I still carried on wearing the mini though, but I would never dream of
now wearing a skimpy short shirt.

Mysti: For me, it was stirrup pants. Need I say more?



Jane Carver ("A-mazing Shift") : If you could have been told one thing that you weren't told when you were a teenager, what would you like to have heard?


Jane: Don't over eat and do exercise! I hit college when still a teen and found a bounty of food in my dorm's cafeteria. Thinking back now, I ate my way through my freshman year! Did I get up and play baseball or volleyball or do anything but trudge the hills where my university sat? Heck no! I guess that would be my one 'well, you could have told me' moments. Oh and maybe the one about eating an entire milk-carton type box of chocolate malted balls. Stress and a test led me right to that big carton of candy. Passed the test; got sick as a dog from the malted ball overload. Haven't touch 'em since. *grin*


Mysti: Yep, my "freshman 15" was more like "freshman 30"! Who knew a meal card would buy so many ramen noodles and Chef Boyardee?


Nell Duvall ("The Corpulent Chiropteran") : When trick-or-treating as a kid, was there any kind of candy that you didn't like to get?


Nell: Chocolate.


Mysti: Be gone, foul demon! Surely ye speak blasphemy! Hee, hee. I'll just take the chocolate from your trick-or-treat bag like I do from my kids. 


Jenny Twist ("Doppelganger") : When you were in grade school, what did you want to be when you grew up? Why?

Jenny: As a child I was going to be a famous singing and dancing film star. An unlikely ambition since I was a chubby child and not exactly graceful. But I could sing in key.

I spent a great deal of time singing songs from the shows in our front room, holding a hairbrush as a substitute microphone, convinced that the people passing by would stop in wonder at hearing my beautiful voice.

I did, in fact, later become a singer, but not a dancer or film star.

My entire family on my father's side was in show business. My grandmother had been a singer with a big band and my father and Aunt Mary were club singers. My cousins between them are or have been singers, dancers, a theatrical producer, a floor manager for a television studio, owners and managers of a theatrical school, and a PR manager for a football club.

Family parties always involved everyone getting up and 'doing a turn'.

My first proper performance was in a working man's club, after the children's outing to the seaside. My dad, who up to then hadn't noticed that I could sing, immediately recruited me to join his duo and I became a proper paid performer.

I have, in my time, been a club singer, jazz singer and escapologist's assistant/vocalist.

It's an odd existence, living out of a suitcase and never getting paid very much.

Later I became respectable and confined my singing to amateur stuff in folk clubs. Much more civilized.

I'm now rather glad I didn't pursue my childhood dream for too long. I much prefer writing.

Mysti: Though I would love to hear you sing, I think you chose wisely, because I definitely love your writing!


Walt Trizna ("Elmo's Sojourn") : Name the most famous person you've had a face to face encounter with.

Walt: I pondered those considered ‘famous’ that I have met, and I came to a conclusion.  Time, for most, will erase their fleeting recognition.

I once shook hands with Paul Tibbets, pilot of the Enola Gay the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, met Robert Morgan, the pilot of the Memphis Belle.  But to the younger generation, these names might be meaningless.

  I met Jane Smiley, but if you’re not a reader that name will bring no recognition.

For seven years I lived in West Los Angeles. It was in the early 1980’s and as my wife and I walked home from dinner at a local restaurant.  There, standing on the sidewalk all alone was a short old man smoking an immense cigar.  We had just walked by George Burns.

My most memorable encounter occurred around 1980.  I was single then and lived next to a very mysterious woman.  She would leave Los Angeles for extended periods of time and ask me to pay her bills. 

One summer Saturday afternoon, she knocked at my door and asked for a ride I soon found myself in the hills north of Sunset Blvd with my bug passing past mansions.

 I brought my neighbor’s suitcase in, and while standing in the foyer, she came in.  Wearing a bathrobe and a towel around her hair, strode Peggy Lee. 

Mysti: That is awesome! The closest I came to a celebrity was at U.K. when President Clinton was there. I couldn't actually see him because of the crowd, but I held my disposable camera up over everyone's heads and got a tiny, blurry image of him later. 

James N. Cricket ("Mission to Doom" and "Bi-Curious Wife") : Have you ever had a reoccurring dream? What was it?


James: When I was a child the recurring dream I remember was being terrified surrounded by water as far as I could see in any direction. I don't know if I drowned in a prior life, or what. When I got older I consulted a dream interpreter and I was told that dream means I am a closet intellectual. hahaha


Mysti: I sometimes dream of flying, but I'm always afraid I'd fly into power lines. Maybe that means I have potential, but am too scared of failure...or electrocution. 


T.D. Jones ("Just A Little Too Late") : What is your favorite weird food combination?


T.D.: My food that I love together is chili cheese fritos and ice cream sandwiches. Love to run the chip along the edge of the ice cream then eat the chip. 


Mysti: I knew I liked you for some reason, T.D.! Ha ha!


I hope you've enjoyed today's collaborative dose of randomness! Thank you again, authors, for stopping in. Readers, please take the time to visit the links below for more information on their work. 


Ellen Margret: http://www.ellenmargret.co.uk/

Jane Carver: www.romances-by-janie.com

http://janiecarver2011.wordpress.com

Nell Duvall: http://www.melange-books.com/authors/nellduvall/nellduvall.html

Jenny Twist: http://www.melange-books.com/authors/jennytwist/jennytwist.html

Walt Trizna: http://www.melange-books.com/authors/walttrizna/walttrizna.html

James N. Cricket: http://www.jamesncricket.com/

T.D. Jones:
www.tdjones.weebly.com

www.writingonthego.blogspot.com

www.twitter.com/TDJones5