Novelist and short story writer Thaisa Frank takes on the Litquake Author Interview. See her during Litquake at Off the Richter Scale: Masters of Flash and The Art of Short Fiction. Here, in 13 questions, she reveals her favorite words, books, authors, and more.
1. What is your favorite book?- Here are several that I always refer to and like to teach: As I Lay Dying (Faulkner), The Dwarf (Par Lakerqvist), anything by Boll, Kafka, Calvino, or O’Conner (Flannery). And there are dozens more.
- 2. How old were you when you were first published?
- Twelve. A story was published in a national magazine and I got paid.
- 3. What writing style do you most abhor?
- All genres are good if they’re done well.
- 4. What is your favorite writing cliché?
- “Critically acclaimed.”
- 5. What is your favorite word?
- “Inchoate.”
- 6. When and how do you write?
- I’m a sprinter. Blank days and then around the clock. I use a Mac and start a lot of my work longhand.
- 7. What is your greatest fear when you first turn in a manuscript?
- That the editor won’t like it.
- 8. In what era do you wish you’d been born?
- I can’t give up the antibiotics that saved me from many miserable days. If I could take them with me, I’d love to be a fly on the wall in the cave days and a troubadour in medieval France.
- 9. Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
- They change and I realize them after I’ve stopped using them. It used to be luminous.
- 10. Which talent would you most like to have?
- To be invisible. (I’d get lots of good material that way.)
- 11. What do you consider your greatest achievement?
- Having a child.
- 12. Who is your favorite hero of fiction?
- Tristram Shandy
- 13. How would you like to die?
- In a world where eternity is an option.
