I bumped in to Maria, at her London home, as she listened to tracks from one of the very latest, exciting, new bands to surface in the music industry. Due to the ridiculous size of her headphones, Maria was unable to hear me enter the room, where she was working.
I managed to rescue Maria from the floor and plop her back onto her chair just before I then, stood on her hefty headphones.
Hello, Maria, thank you so much for joining me for this chinwag today.
Thanks for inviting me, Tara. I’m thrilled to be hanging out with you today :)
Hmm... 'hanging' - well you certainly were a moment ago and I guess you could now describe your headphones as 'hanging'.
Anyway, as with all of my chinwags, here is a really easy question to start us off.
1. What is the biggest asteroid in the asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter?
I have done a quick Google search which led me to Wikipedia and have now discovered another useless bit of information to add to many other useless bits of information in my brain :).
Your dad is an alien, Maria? How interesting! Funnily enough, I can now see the resemblance.
I’m not working as a solicitor at the moment. I haven’t been practising law since about 2010. I was specialising in conveyancing and the housing market crashed so I was basically left without a trade. At the moment, I’m working as an administrator for a university. The work doesn’t require much brain power, so I find that I can also do writing/editing/blogging in the evenings and at weekends. It’s still hard fitting it all in and involves a lot of late nights and coffee.
When I worked as a solicitor, I only ever managed to write short stories and that was mainly at the weekends or when I was on holiday. I doubt I’d be able to carry on writing novels if I went back to work as a solicitor. All my novels were written in times of unemployment or when I was working part-time. I’m not really looking to go back into practise at the moment as I’d prefer to concentrate on my writing.
Spare time for me is usually writing time. It’s rare. I don’t get much spare time. If I could invent a machine that would give me lots of extra spare time, I’d like to travel more and also spend more time with my nieces and nephew.
Here is a little something that I had designed, especially for you, Maria.
It’s not a matter of preference for me. A story will choose whether it wants to be a novel or a short story, I have found. Or rather, the characters will decide!
I like how quickly a short story can be written and the editing is definitely much easier for a short story. I hate editing my novels because there are always so many inconsistencies that need fixing. My first drafts are never really planned and are consequently very, very, rough.
Hmm... yes, I've seen your bin, full of rough drafts, outside, Maria.
I don’t think a writer has a choice when it comes to writing. It’s more of a need. I’d say I am a full time writer now, even though I also have a day job. I get home from work and start writing/editing. I really would like to earn enough money to one day give up the day job, just for the sake of my sanity, really. It’s very hard working two jobs. Nobody sees writing as a job because they think it’s all fun. There is a lot of fun to be had, but much of it is tedious, involving reading the same piece of work 100 times and still finding typos in it! There was something posted on Facebook that struck a chord with me, which said something like “A writer is someone who has signed up to do homework every day for the rest of his/her life”. This, in my experience, is very true.
I’d love to return to New York. I’ve only been there once but fell in love with it. There’s so much to see and last time I was only on a short break so didn’t get to see it all. Another dream vacation would be Australia because I have relatives there and am always hearing about how wonderful it is.
Jimi Hendrix so that he could play guitar to entertain us.
Robin Williams, so he could make me laugh.
I can see that they are all ready and waiting, in their pyjamas, Maria.
Quite a few things. As I get older, more and more things annoy me LOL... top of my list would be mornings. Especially Monday mornings. Also, people who have loud conversations on their mobiles on the bus. Oh, and smartphones in general, just the way people behave when they’re using them, oblivious to the world around them.
Err, sorry - just texting my friend...
Anyway, yes Maria...
Sorry, just replying to my friend, be right back...
As I was saying, I see what you... ha, ha, ha... oops, sorry Maria, my friend just sent a funny picture to me...
Moody. Intuitive. Sensitive. Romantic. Kind. Emotional.
So much of our lives is on the Internet these days, especially as indie authors trying to promote our books. People probably know everything about me already. I’m really not that interesting. I always find it hard to answer this type of question because I’m a ‘what you see is what you get’ person, and there’s not much hidden.
Well I think you're very interesting, Maria. You could never be as boring as the most boring man on earth...
After all, you did tell me that your dad comes from another planet...
So, finally the most important question of all…
12. What is the opposite of opposite?
That sentence makes my brain go funny, like it’s a mathematical equation or something!
According to the online thesaurus, it’s: agreeing, similar, compatible, or like. But I’m going to invent a new word: unopposite :)
I like it - wonder if it will catch on.
Thanks, Tara. It was fun! :)
You can find out more about Maria (maybe, even the name of the planet where her ancestors come from) at the links below or alternatively, here on the Author Showcase.
Maria's website
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