Five Questions

These five questions are from my friend Annika as part of a blog interview thing (I'm not quite hip with the blog lingo [blingo?] yet). The other part of the "thing" is that if any of you, dear readers, would like to be interviewed as well, just let me know with a comment and your personal set of five questions will be zipped right over via what I believe is called "e-mail."

the interview

1. What writing project(s) are you working on right now?

Aside from writing literary analysis and research papers (the latest of which was 30 pages on Romantic themes in Dystopian literature) I have been working on a novel for well over four years now. It's set in rural Vermont and features a jaded 20-something female cop and a really creepy serial killer who I kinda love.

Also, last semester I did an independent study exploring different kinds of experimental/postmodern fiction and gave myself permission to basically copy the styles of writers like John Barth, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Donald Barthelme and it was really fun.

2. How did you choose your daughters' names?

Well, with Matilda I just kind of knew, and Steve was cool with it, so we had her name picked out about 30 minutes after I peed on the stick, you know, if she was girl. Had she been a boy she would have been named Emmanuel, after Steve's stepfather who died before we met. So, her full name is Matilda Emmanuel Root.

Freya was a lot harder. If she had been a boy I really wanted to call her Malcolm, but we knew she wasn't, and anyway, Steve didn't like that. He also didn't like Elinor, which was my top pick for a girl. Then he came up with Freya, who is the Norse goddess of love and death and war and other cool stuff and so I agreed. Her full name is Freya Holman Root. Holman is my mother's maiden name.

3. If you could go anywhere in the world for a week, alone, where would you go?

*sigh* This is the best question ever, and I wish I could answer it, but honestly, I can't think of any place I wouldn't want to be if I was all alone for a week. Except home, anywhere but in plain view of the laundry.

4. Same question, but with your family.

Anywhere but Disneyland.

Actually there are a lot of places I'd like to go with my family. The top of my list would have to be a little cabin by the beach with a kitchen and a front porch and a place to sit and watch the ocean while Steve and I drink a glass of wine. (The girls would be playing in the sand, laughing, running, and being careful not to go so deep in the water that I have a heart attack.)

5. Other than your children, what is the biggest thing that's happened in your life in the last ten years?

Well, on May 12 I will receive a baccalaureate degree after 10 years as an undergraduate, that feels pretty sweet.

I think my life is pretty boring.

If you ask me this again a year from now, hopefully I will be able to tell you which really great grad school I got into.

Ooh! We bought a house! Last summer, after 3 years of living as nomads (apartment, my parent's house, his parent's house, a friend's house) we finally did it! That's pretty huge for us, and for me especially. I love our house and I love knowing that it's ours.

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Thanks Annika! That was fun, I haven't even thought about some of these things, at least not for a very long time.