QUESTION 1: So this author I dearly love, Kim Harrison often refers to the Meyers-Briggs test when asked about her characters’ personalities. I thought it was very interesting, albeit a bit clinical… So, have you ever taken, or have you thought about taking the MB test for your characters?

Uh, well, first of all, I don’t even know what this Meyers-Briggs thing is. I could Google it, of course, but that would require effort, and we all know how I feel about that. But from your description, I would say that it isn’t something that interests me. Every author has different ways of getting into his or her (and damn, English needs a good neutral pronoun, doesn’t it?) characters’ heads, and that’s fine. But tests and charts aren’t my thing. I don’t think about real people like that, so why would I think about my characters that way? They’re more like a funky group of slightly mad people who live down the hall, and throw parties at odd hours and occasionally shoot off firearms. And leave bodies in the stairwell. So, honestly, I don’t think I’d want to know how they’d rate on a personality test. It would probably have to be in the section labeled ‘mental disorders’ anyway, which isn’t all that helpful.

QUESTION 2: What kind of fanmail do you get? (I wanna know us better! But from previous interviews is it really that crazy sometimes??)

Um, let’s see. The most interesting recently was probably the (very nice) French woman who wrote asking for essentially a book of info on most of the main characters. A sample section (there were a lot of these) reads:

Can you tell me anything about the curriculum vitae of the Chinese consul, Ming-de, like who has changed her and how, what did she do in all these centuries, what is her bond to her family, what does she do when there are no meeting of the senate and how are her relationships to Mircea, Anthony, Cleopatra, Cheung and “Scarface”?

The answer, of course, is yes, but I’m not going to. Or, rather, I probably will, but in book form. Because, you know, that’s how I earn a living. To answer her questions properly would have taken, oh, maybe a couple hundred pages (she asked about a LOT of characters) and much as I love you guys—no, really—I have to eat too, know what I’m saying?

Other than for those kind of spoiler-type things, I get two main types of emails: the “you suck, you suck hard” variety and the “you’re awesome” kind. And honestly, I think the former is easier to deal with, since it involves hitting all of one key. But I have never really figured out what to do with the latter.

It makes me nervous, particularly because internet culture is all about over-the-top, grand statements. Nothing is ever good, it’s OMG so gooood, you guys!!!!1! Squee!!! And people get used to that. So when they write me, they tend to, uh, exaggerate their love, so to speak. I get a lot of ‘you’re the best author ever OMG!’ stuff that I don’t really know how to deal with. Since there was this guy Bill something…Shakespeare, I think it was…who was probably slightly better. You know, on a good day. So I never really know what to say to those kinds of things.

QUESTION 3: That’s also something a lot of authors say, that they “see” their characters, like in a movie. Is it also your case?

Well, I can say that I’d like to see my characters in a movie. Hey directors, anybody listening? Producers…studio heads…anybody…

Anyway, this is one of those things that makes me think that maybe I’m cynical—no, no couldn’t be—but it sounds like BS. The sort of thing writers come up with in desperation because we get a lot of interviews with the same questions, over and over, and we have to think of something new to say. Because honestly, it’s easier for some of us (me, anyway) to write books than to talk about writing them, and how I come up with ideas, and exactly why I did this or that. A lot of that kind of thing is instinctive, so I don’t really have a cut and dried answer.

I mean, what would Dali (and no, I am not comparing myself to the master, so save the hate mail buddy. It’ll go straight into the circular file anyway), but seriously, what would he have said if someone had asked him why he decided to paint melting clocks? I’m sure somebody did ask that at some point, and I’m equally sure that he came up with an answer–that was probably BS because what really happened was that he got up one morning and thought, hey, you know what would be cool? Melting clocks. So he did that. And then he had to come up with a way to make it sound really deep and stuff.

What were we talking about?

Oh, yeah. So no, I don’t really see a movie inside my head. Probably just as well, considering what my characters get up to sometimes!