Q: What am I doing here?
Q: Okay, I can handle that. So who are you, anyway?
Q: So what’s Nadia mean?
Q: You write a lot of reviews and essays. What’s up with that?
Q: I noticed you have more book reviews than anything else. What’s your bookshelf like?
Q: You’re a pretty warped person. How can I manipulate my nieces/ nephews/ offspring/ siblings/ cousins/ grandchildren/ cats to be as twisted as you are?
Q: What do you do when you’re not working on Something Blue or the Fairy Tale/Ballads Archives?
Q: Do you have any weird neuroses?
Q: Bastille Day, mmm? What’s your favorite holiday? Halloween, right, Gothgirl?
Q: What kind of people hang around you?
Q: Oh. So…what do you look like? * wink *
Q: You scare yourself? Why?
Q: Do you like movies, or is such borgeouise entertainment below you?
Q: You like “Unchained Melody”? So do I! What other music do you like?
Q: Can I have your phone number?
Q: So one last question…where DID she get the laudanum?
A: Obviously, you’re here because you want to know more about me. I don’t know how much you’ll learn from it, but I’ll tell you what I want to. And nothing more. Yes, I know that’s enough for you. Yes, you’re welcome.
A: I’m Nadia, known to go by a variety of nicknames including: Kiddo, Short Stuff, Fun-Size, Bite-Size, Travel-Size, Frisbee B*tch, Peach, WerePeach, Peach Goddess, Wench, E.O.B., Queen of the Lepruchans, Queen Mab, Deesee (misspelled: some French word that means goddess), Sis, Nad, Bill, Andy, and yes, I will answer to “Amadeus” if I’m in the right mood. It’s a very long and complicated story involving debatable cats, Divine Prophets, the Apocalypse, and a black Saturn with vanity plates reading “ROCKM3”.
A: It’s a variant of the Russian word “nadezdha”, which means “hope”.
A: I write like a mad thing. Essays, poems, songs, short stories, novels (the fanfictions California Daze and Questing for Chaos being the first two, Night Music being my long-abandoned but finished vampire one, and Local Legends being my pet project [read: TL readaptation])…anything goes, pretty much. I’ve even been known to write lyrics for the fictional band that appears from time to time in my work…Body Count has anywhere from seven to a dozen (I can’t remember…) fictional songs to their credit, my personal favorites being “As Things Get Ever Stranger” and “Ailly Silver”, the latter being written in honor of my sister. My short stories and vignettes have gained recognition from my friends, classmates, teachers, and “Certain Shades of Green” became briefly famous at a writing workshop I was bullied into attending. My poetry has been printed in school newsletters. My letter to Ask Dave of Disney magazine fame ran (mentioned in the Table of Contents and everything…) and is taped into the inside of one of my notebooks. I am proud to say that I have never written a fan letter.
A: My reading habits are strange at best. I’m proud to be just three books short of owning all of Anne Rice’s vampire books. I enjoy Pamela Dean, but she creeps me out. I like Francesca Lia Block, Anne Rice, J.R.R. Tolkein, and James Joyce for their revolutionary/experimental styles. My favorite poets are John Keats, Samuel Coleridge, Edgar Allen Poe, Geoffrey Chaucer, Homer, and Ogden Nash. I’m in love with Shakespeare for what my teachers assure me are all the wrong reasons. I have no taste for Charlotte Bronte or Jane Austen, but I do enjoy Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, which in my opinion everyone should read at least once, even if they hate it. I enjoyed the original vampire story, Dracula, both in its text format and as a Mind’s Eye Theatre production (scared the living eldritch lights out of me…). Lewis Carroll’s charms on me have only increased with time, and I quote him whenever I get the chance. I have a passionate devotion to “The Chronicles of Narnia”, especially The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and The Magician’s Nephew. Phillip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” series, the Terri Windling-created “Fairy Tale Series”, Terry Pratchett’s “Discworld” books, and Piers Anthony’s “Incarnations of Immortality” series are my favorite sets of books. I read Susan Cooper’s “The Dark is Rising” sequence and really disliked it.
A: I think all children should read or have read to them Andrew Lang’s Colored Fairy Books (Blue, Red, and Green), Hans Christian Anderson’s “The Snow Queen”, Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, Jane Yolen’s “Tam Lin: An Old Ballad”, the Dr. Seuss books, Shel Silverstein’s poetry (that which is INTENDED for children), and the Old Testament Bible stories. Even if you aren’t a Christian, or if your child rejects Christianity later in life, Old Testament stories are an excellent source of quotations, general wisdom, and inspiration when suffering writer’s block. Not to mention it’s a great place to find names, which brings me to…
A: Ah…my other hobbies. I dabble in languages. I collect panda bear items, clothing, books, etcetera. The same goes for roses and peaches. I, strangely, collect and sort buttons. I dry roses and herbs (think mint and rosemary, not marijuana). I do collage art, and giving me a pile of magazines and a pair of scissors will keep me busy for hours. Drawing is a sometime hobby of mine, and I have been paid (as in, with money) for work. I love to randomly scour search engines, and I get a kick out of taking internet personality tests. The mythologies and folklore of Scotland, Ireland, Romania, Judaica (Jewish), Egypt, Portugal & Spain, and the Far East fascinate me. Ballads frequently take over my life as I attempt to track and sort them. I have a love affair with the work of John William Waterhouse. Without fail, in every bookstore I go to I look for a) Patricia McKillip, b) Pamela Dean, c) Jane Yolen’s “Tam Lin”, and d) Cowboy Bebop manga. I guess that qualifies as a quirk and falls into the next category.
A: I always smell food before putting it in my mouth. ALWAYS, even when my nose is so stuffed that gasoline can’t clear it. I prefer my tea scalding hot. Warm water and warm milk will both make me throw up. I can write passably with my left hand. I can write backwards, very well, with both hands. I never take off nailpolish: I wait for it to wear away completely before putting on a new coat. I can’t listen to the songs “Welcome Home (Sanitarium)” by Metallica, “Crawling” by Linkin Park, or “The Cutter” by Echo and the Bunnymen and stay calm. I’m not a particularly neat person, but I absolutely insist on having all of my writing, research, and files organized. I sleep on my stomach (I have yet to meet another girl over the age of ten who sleeps on her stomach, except possibly Ailly when she’s napping), with my face turned so that I can best see the door, unless I’m keeping an eye on someone else in the room. I will rip into people who make rape jokes. I will also rip into people who make homosexual jokes, dead baby jokes, or who use the word “faggot” in referring to a gay male. I will not associate with people who do imitations of the mentally handicapped. I observe saint’s holidays, Fairy Tale Appreciation week, and Bastille Day.
A: My favorite holidays are St. Basil of Aix’s, St. Martin’s Night, the 4th of July (I’m in love with fireworks), and Halloween (despite the fact that I dress up almost every day).
A: Small children and retarded people are, for some reason, strangely attracted to me. For that matter, so are socially inept, slightly overweight RPG boys. I enjoy playing games: RISK, freestyle roleplaying, Illuminati, Scrabble, Trivial Pursuit, War, Wreath, and chess. I like supervising bouts of Magic and Mage Knights. If I had someone willing to DM, I would play DnD. Saints deliver me.
A: Cool it, Humbert Humbert- I’m hardly Lolita. I’m too old for my rather small body, but too young (and in several ways too intelligent) for my grade. I’m not expected to get any taller than my five-feet-two-inches, or to “develop” much farther in this lifetime. I’ve never weighed more than 97 pounds. My hair is over twenty-six inches long and a myriad of colors usually bunched together as “brown”, but it contains large amounts of blonde and red that show up in direct sunlight (not that I get much of that) and, strangely, on black-and-white film. My eyes are very dark brown and many people over the years have mistaken them for black as it’s so difficult to see the pupil unless, again, I’m in direct light. I was at a mirror with very strong vanity lights a few weeks ago, saw my pupils, and scared myself. But of course, looking into a mirror usually scares me.
A: For one thing, I’m a strange dresser. I own more skirts and dresses than pants. If I could belong to any fashion period I wanted to, it would be the late 1800s and the 1920s. I like my clothes in black, jewel tones, and crazy prints. Slogan T-shirts usually annoy me, which is why I don’t own any. My store of choice is Goodwill (there are four of them in driving distance that I like, and a fifth that never has anything good). My favorite skirt is black. My favorite shirt has a cravat. My favorite hat is a grey fedora, favorite jackets are a red windbreaker and a grey trenchcoat, favorite shoes are pixie combat boots in winter (red poppy flip-flops in summer), favorite belt is comprised of stainless steel butterflies, favorite dress is blue with little white flowers and far too short to be decent, and my favorite pants are long-suffering victims of my clothing (r)evolution. I have two favorite sweatshirts: one is black and sports Eeyore, and the other is purple and feature Figment the Dragon. I’m in love with jewelry: necklaces, chokers, bracelets, anklets, hairbands, earrings, rings…you name it. Stephen likes to tease me about all my bracelets. Ryan is completely incapable of figuring out my hair accessories. Robert correctly guessed that my newest necklace charm is, indeed, an owl. His name is Minervos. My coolest piece of jewelry is probably either my killer star bracelet/ring, my unicorn ribbon choker, or my filing cabinet keys (which I usually wear around my waist when I’m at school, but in the summer they stay in my purse with my ID, library, and bank cards).
A: I enjoy having movie marathons and watching cheesy TV movies. My favorite movies are The Princess Bride, The Lost Boys, Labyrinth, Mononoke Hime, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, The Goonies, Ghostbusters, Excalibur, Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Interview With the Vampire, The Faculty, Anthony Hopkin’s Dracula, Spirited Away, Jack and the Beanstalk, The Princess and the Goblin (precisely because it’s so terrible…), Clue (thank you, Robert), The Shawshank Redemption, The Mask of Zorro, The (original) Star Wars Trilogy, Amadeus, and Beetlejuice. Being forced to watch Tim Allen’s “The Santa Clause” on the drive home from Florida after Thanksgiving every year for four years has only made me completely loathe it. I also, unlike most girls and women that I know, found no redeeming values in the movie “Ghost” despite my extreme attachment to the Righteous Brothers’ “Unchained Melody.”
A: My music is highly eclectic. I like Nightwish and the Scandinavian death metal, Johnny Cash and the “good” country, Broadway musicals, Veggie Tales, Sarah McLachlan and the girl-folk sound, Fairport Convention and balladry groups, Sinead O’Conner and activist pop/rock, Depeche Mode and the goth movement, sixties pop, SOME eighties pop, and some R&B/rap. I also really love classical music and instrumentals, a taste that Ailly can’t seem to fathome. Rock me, Amadeus!
A: No.
A: Pamela Dean doesn’t tell us.