I invited Kat to interview me, not realizing what I was in for. I'm gonna start emailing everyblogger I know question out of desperation soon, just so's I can dig through their everyblogger brains too...

1. You find a backpack. You open it to look for some kind of identifying information, and discover that it contains over $100,000. Do you keep it, or turn it in?
Turn it in. No question about it. On the one hand, it could have been dropped by some bank robber who doesn't need it but all the bills are marked or numbered and when I spend it they'll be traced and I'll get in trouble; on the other hand it could have been dropped by someone who'd collected all of his or her life savings into one pile of paper wishes to take to the track to win enough money to pay for his kid's college education, or to pay a faith healer to cure her mother's cancer, or to pay protection money so that the family liquor store wouldn't be robbed again... I can always make money, I have no need to steal from someone else.

2. Describe the most exhilarating experience you've ever had.
I'd like to say it was slamming down a zip line or losing my virginity or taking control of my stepdad's plane and flying (woohoo!) for the first time or speeding down the empty 101 freeway at 3:00 a.m. on my old Nighthawk, but all of that was so long ago that I'd have to fess up and say that more recently it was getting my very first paycheck for creative writing - not technical writing or documentation or some such dry tech-geek crapola, but wordstuff sprung dripping and squalling from my forebrain - 500 smackeroonies/clams/big ones made out to yours truly! And I'm such a geek about it that my ex-hubby scanned the check and framed it for me so that I can always be reminded that I'm a perfessssshunull rytur.

3. Who has influenced your writing the most? How?
I'd love to say it was one of my living writer friends but since they all do techno-thrillers or space opera or dark fantasy with a twist of lime, and my *voice* seems to be kudzu-dripping Southern Goth of late, I dunno. Tennessee Williams? Oh, I know - James Valentine DuPratt, my high school English teacher! I'm sure there's something Southern Goth in the back of that man's brain... or was, before he died of a brain tumor. Wait, that's not boding well for all those strange lumps and bumps across my skull...

4. Do blondes really have more fun?
Depends on your definition of fun. In Cali we're a dime a dozen, in Los Angeles we're $350 a bottle (okay, so for me it's $8 a bottle 'cuz I'm cheap and only go from my natural dishwater blonde to sparkling platinum beauty after drinking too much with certain redhead who shall remain nameless but who came up with these questions in the first place).

5. Which 5 songs always evoke an emotional response in you? Happy, sad, angry, any emotional reaction. Why?
Creep. So many songs, so many nuances of emotion and memory evoked by the opening bars that remind me what I'm about to feel... fine. Five you want, five it is, off the top of my head in no particular order:

The Finer Things - Steve Winwood
Reminds me of my freshman year at UCSB and all that shining optimism I had yet to get scratched and scuffed off of my mind - comforts me and reminds me to keep on keeping on, puts me in a good mood and gets me bopping around in my seat wherever I am (no matter who's watching). Madonna's La Isla Bonita has the same effect - that was my theme song way back in the day (ha! snuck in an extra song!!).

"While there is time
Let's go out and feel everything
If you hold me
I will let you into my dream
For time is a river rolling into nowhere
We must live while we can
And we'll drink our cup of laughter"

No Woman, No Cry - Bob Marley
Evokes resolve to keep moving on while acknowledging the losses of the past - starts out sad but is ultimately uplifting. Redemption Song has a similar effect on me (ha!! snuck yet another song in there, dammit!!!)

"Good friends we have,
Oh, good friends we've lost
Along the way
In this great future,
You can't forget your past
So dry your tears, I say"

Unwell - Matchbox Twenty
The lyrics seem to be the perfect expression of how I've been feeling lately, what I've been wanting to say to any of the new people I've been getting closer to, as well as to some of my old friends who are surely wondering what cave I've hunkered down and been hiding in while the emotional storms have been raging in and outside my head. I'm not crazy, just a little battered; slightly cracked but not broken... I swear.

"All day staring at the ceiling
Making friends with shadows on my wall
All night hearing voices telling me
That I should get some sleep
Because tomorrow might be good for something "

Georgia On My Mind as sung by almost anybody, but preferably Ray Charles
Nostalgia and homecoming. Brings me to mind of driving down a rainy road through heavy woods, steering by the flashing white of the center line, looking forward to a hot cup of coffee at the next truckstop.

"A song of you
Comes as sweet and clear
As moonlight through the pines"

Crazy - Patsy Cline
Sad and angry - reminds me of my mother and bio-father's relationship, as well as of some of the same passive-aggressive dysfunctional bullshit she went through with my stepdad. May I never be in that space...

"Worry, why do I let myself worry?
Wond'ring what in the world did I do?
Crazy for thinking that my love could hold you
I'm crazy for trying and crazy for crying
And I'm crazy for loving you"

Thar it be. You wanna be interviewed by me, drop me a line and lemme know.

*echo*