I’d like to welcome Maggie King back to the blog for #ThisorThatThursday!
Favorite thing to do when you have free time: Sit on the porch and get lost in a mystery.
The thing you’ll always move to the bottom of your to do list: Cleaning out closets, drawers, and cabinets, especially if installing shelf paper is involved.
Things you need when you’re in your writing cave: Pen, paper, computer, good light, cat (but not on the keyboard!), and QUIET.
Things that distract you from writing: Lawn mowers, leaf blowers, noise, and my own need to find excuses for not writing.
Hardest thing about being a writer: Developing creative ideas into a story worth telling.
Easiest thing about being a writer: Coming up with creative ideas in the first place.
The coolest thing you’ve bought online: iPads. I’m absolutely tethered to mine. Glen still prefers his laptop and phone.
The thing you wished you’d never bought: A set of long and skinny measuring spoons that, per the ad, can slide right into spice jars. They do slide into spice jars, but not all the sizes fit into the square spice tins. As I typically purchase store brands, most of my spices are in the tins. So the spoons are semi-useful, but not worth the $15 price.
Something you wanted to be when you were a kid: An actor, then a nurse, then an English teacher. I did none of those things. I was a retail sales manager, a customer service supervisor, a programmer analyst, and a non-profit administrator.
Something you do that you never dreamed you’d do: Public speaking.
Something you wish you could do: Be a rock star.
Something you wish you’d never learned to do: Clean toilets.
Last best thing you ate: Linguine with marinara sauce.
Last thing you regret eating: An omelette with liver. I was traveling in Europe and recklessly ordered from a non-English menu. Traveling is all about adventure, right?
Things to say to an author: “When’s your next book coming out? I can hardly wait!”
Things to say to an author if you want to be fictionally killed off in their next book:
New acquaintance: “So what do you do?”
Me: “I’m a mystery writer.”
NA: “Really? Do you know so-and-so? I just love him.” Hand over heart, swoons.
Me: “No, I haven’t had the pleasure.”
NA: stabs at her phone several times before thrusting it at me. “You really have to read him.” Takes back phone. “Well, nice meeting you. Gotta run.”
People you’d like to invite to dinner (living): Jimmy Carter, Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama, Sara Paretsky, Louise Penny, Reese Witherspoon.
People you’d cancel dinner on: Dictators and dictator-wannabes (wouldn’t even have accepted their invites).
Best thing you’ve ever done: Marrying my True Love.
Biggest mistake: Turning down the permanent IT job at UVA (not that big a mistake).
The funniest thing to happen to you: One day I arrived at work wearing different colored shoes. I had two pairs of the same shoe style, one black, the other tan. I had to get to work very early and was always in a rush.
The most embarrassing thing to happen to you: It was the end of junior year of high school. My friend Marianne and I went to Howard Johnson’s, a popular hangout at the time. Brian Vitale stood in line waiting for a booth. Marianne and I went to the ladies’ room, where I went on and on about how cute Brian Vitale was, how I wanted to go out with him, yada, yada. A girl came out of a stall, washed her hands, and left. Marianne said, “I’m not sure, but I think she’s Brian Vitale’s girlfriend.” “Let’s hope not,” I said with a feeling of dread.
A glance at the line told us all we needed to know: Brian and the girl holding hands. We ducked into a booth that had just been vacated, hoping no one would notice. No such luck. The host shooed us away, and I slunk by BV and his lady love.
Thankfully, he had just graduated and I never saw him, or her, again.
The nicest thing a reader said to you: A woman at church approached me, a copy of Murder at the Moonshine Inn in hand. She opened the book to her favorite character description: “Her eyes looked like she’d wrung the blue color out of them.”
The craziest thing a reader said to you: I published my first short story in January of 2014 and my first full-length mystery in December, 2014 (a “book-ended” year). Most of my friends read the short story and looked forward to the novel. But one informed me that she would wait for the novel, as she didn’t read short stories. She was quite adamant about it.
