Eleven Questions For Laura Preble, Author
- Posted by Essays Blog in Essays Blog |
- August 23rd, 2008 |
- Comments
Ms. Preble is an award-winning educator, a jazz singer and pianist, and the author of The Queen Geek Club and its just-published addendum Queen Geeks In Love (both available from Penguin Books). A self-admitted geek, Laura is a ability fiction fan and currently lives in the San Diego area with her husband, jazz musician Chris Klich and her sons Austin and Noel.
T.E. Pouncey: I good enjoyed your novel. Are any of the elements in The Queen Geek Club autobiographical?
Laura Preble: Actually, the book is kinda like how I would have been in high school if I’d had better clothes and more confidence. Other than that, a lot of it is based on different elements of the schools where I’ve taught (Westbound Hills High and Mar Aspect High in San Diego, CA). I contemplate my students, so accept pieces of different kids, fasten them unitedly, and create new characters. It’s kind of like Frankenstein, but with less lightning.
TEP: Do you create a character and so change what they look like, or do you change a character and so create their personality?
LP: I believe I unremarkably have a expression in mind first. For Queen Geeks, I woke up one morning at 3 a.m. and just had this idea, and the character of Shelby in mind. Her appearance developed as I developed her personality; the smart-ass attitude and wry observations definitely molded her appearance. Plus, she looks a little like me if I’m having a really good day and have access to a foggy mirror.
TEP: The character Shelby Chappelle in TQGSC has a great robot brother named Euphoria. Which robot would you rather hang out with, R2-D2 or C-3PO?
LP: Geez. That’s like asking individual to choose which child they’d abandon on The Titanic … but if I had to pick, I believe I’d go with C-3P0 because he actually talks. R2-D2 is much more down-to-earth and actually more intelligent, but since he just beeps and sounds like atmospherics from a faint radio base, it would probably bug me.
TEP: Address of movies, if TQGSC was optioned as a movie, would you deprivation to compose the screenplay?
LP: Yes, and if you happen to know of any really powerful Hollywood mover and/or shaker, please hook me up. I love to compose dialog, so I believe I’d do really advantageously with a screenplay.
TEP: You once said you grew up in Ohio on a diet of hot chocolate and ability fiction. Who were any of your favorite authors?
LP: I old to activity at the local library, and my job was to go to the basement and bring up back copies of old magazines (this was before Internet … arghgh!). Anyway, when I wasn’t busy, I’d hide in the dozens and read Isaac Asimov and Amazing Stories, Robert Heinlein, Robert Silverburg, Program Robinson, Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, plus fantasy like Tolkien and Piers Anthony. I’m really a sci-fi bawd and will read anything anybody puts in front of me.
TEP: Any plans for a TQGSC addendum or do you deprivation to activity with a brand new group of characters?
LP: Advantageously, I do have a addendum coming out in November of this year, and it’s called Queen Geeks in Love. It follows the exploits of the same geeky characters (as advantageously as Euphoria), and tackles the barbed problem of what happens when geeks date. Any highlights: attending Comic-Con as homemade superheroes, and putting on Geek Fest, a celebration of endowment designed to humiliate those involved as advantageously as those observance.
TEP: You have cardinal sons. How do THEY react to Mom’s being a self-admitted geek?
LP: Ah! They are little geeks in training. The oldest one, Austin, goes with me to Comic-Con. In fact, we did a singing contest unitedly thither on a new lip-sync recording game. It was also great this year, because Penguin (my publisher) oversubscribed the first book at Comic-Con and gave postcards out for Queen Geeks in Love, so Austin would go capable people near the booth, hand them postcards, and have “Buy my mom’s book so she’ll feed me!” Noel, the youngest, is also adolescent to believe trueness meaning of the morpheme ‘geek,’ but he’s obsessed with area, aliens, and Harry Potter (at age 4) so I believe it’s destiny that he’ll be a little geek himself.
TEP: Is your first novel, Lica’s Angel, allay in print?
LP: Yes … I consciousness published it a few years ago when I cerebration I’d never get a publishing contract. It’s available on Barnes and Noble’s site as advantageously as Amazon and iUniverse. When I do book signings, they often have it in the fund also. I started a addendum thereto book also, but never got to finish it.
TEP: How did you become interested in jazz music?
LP: My dad had a killer collection of jazz, cut, and Big Band music, and when I moved away to college, I stole all his Duke Ellington records. So I met my husband, Chris Klich, a consummate jazz professional (sax player), and now we make beautiful music unitedly (yuck! Overt drippiness!) Our most recent album, Blue Skies, allay sells lots on CD BABY (and you can hear it at his site chrisklich dot com). We also had an originals band where I wrote all the music and lyrics, and that album is allay floating around out thither also, and can be heard at laurapreble dot com, my music computer.
TEP: Which is harder to be: a good educator, a good writer, or a good musician?
LP: It’s hardest to be all III at the same time, which is what I go for. Plus good mom, good woman, and good Olympic discus ceramicist. (No, that last one was just to accompany if you were paying attention.)
TEP: Can you tell us about any new projects that will be published before the end of the year?
LP: In addition to Queen Geeks in Love, which comes out November 6 &ndash and I’m hoping every person in the Agreed States, Canada, and all English-speaking countries will buy a copy &ndash I’m also employed on a novel titled Punk Boy Mysterious which is not inside the Queen Geek broadcast, and I am in the process of finishing Prom Queen Geeks, the 3rd book in the Queen Geek broadcast, which will be out in Fall 2008. I’ve also been writing for Writer’s Digest, and will be doing a workshop at the Confederate California Writer’s Conference. And I’m allay hoping for a TV appear, a movie, an appearance on Ellen, and perhaps a Pulitzer Prize for humorous literature featuring a robot. (Is that a category? It should be!)
Interview by T.E. Pouncey, and reprinted with permission from GeeksofDoom.