Brendan Buckley and I share one main characteristic: We're both question-askers. My husband has dubbed me "CG," which stands for a certain mischievous monkey whose curiosity gets him into lots of scrapes. But Brendan is much braver than I, in that he not only asks questions, he takes serious action to find the answers, even though it requires confronting hard truths and getting into a little hot water. I can't say I'm that bold, but perhaps that's why I wrote a character who is. Through my characters, I can be who I'm not in real life.

One other similarity -- I wanted to be a geologist when I was in 6th grade. I was destined, however, to be a writer. My theory: Writers are insatiably inquisitive people who don't want to be tied down to any one area of expertise. All of our stories are just reasons to do more research in some area we're curious about!


Greg R. Fishbone, THE PENGUINS OF DOOMS, Blooming Tree Press, July 7, 2007

Not at all! That's why this book was so much fun to write.  Septina is a "style over substance" kind of person while I'm more "substance over style" like Quinn.  And I'm more intellectual, like Quinn.  And I'm a bit more of a realist, again, like Quinn.  But there are many ways in which I'm not like Quinn, either.

Here's one thing I have in common with Septina: I liked to draw doodles in the margins of my school papers like she does. Mine were mostly tank battles, spaceship battles, and geometric shape battles.  When I was Septina's age, my science teacher told my parents that she worried about me because, in her personal experience, the type of doodles I did could only have been drawn by somebody tripping out on LSD.  What personal experience she had with tripping out on LSD, I didn't even want to know.

THE PENGUINS OF DOOM


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