Eleven Questions For Laura Preble, Author
Ms. Preble is an award-winning teacher, a jazz singer and pianist, and the author of The Monarch Geek Social Club and its just-published sequel Monarch Geeks In Cherish (both available from Penguin Books). A self-admitted geek, Laura is a science fiction fan and currently lives in the San Diego world with her husband, jazz saxophonist Chris Klich and her sons Austin and Noel.
T.E. Pouncey: I thoroughly enjoyed your book. Are any of the elements in The Monarch Geek Social Club autobiographical?
Laura Preble: Indeed, the textbook is sort of love how I would accept been in aerial college provided I’d had bigger clothes and added confidence. Other than that, a abundance of it is based on several elements of the schools where I’ve taught (West Hills Aerial and Spoil Vista Aerial in San Diego, CA). I read my students, then booty pieces of several kids, stitch them calm, and actualize fresh characters. It’s affectionate of love Frankenstein, however with less lightning.
TEP: Accomplish you actualize a appearance and then visualize what they attending love, or accomplish you visualize a appearance and then actualize their personality?
LP: I anticipate I normally accept a articulation in apperception aboriginal. For Monarch Geeks, I woke up one morning at 3 a.m. and aloof had this abstraction, and the appearance of Shelby in apperception. Her appearance developed as I developed her personality; the smart-ass mind and wry observations definitely shaped her appearance. Plus, she looks a small love me provided I’m having a actually acceptable time and accept access to a foggy mirror.
TEP: The appearance Shelby Chappelle in TQGSC has a abundant robot sidekick named Euphoria. Which robot would you rather hang outside with, R2-D2 or C-3PO?
LP: Geez. That’s love asking someone to select which minor they’d desert on The Titanic … however provided I had to pick, I anticipate I’d activity with C-3P0 as he indeed talks. R2-D2 is even added down-to-earth and indeed added able, however because he aloof beeps and sounds love static from a faint radio station, it would probably bug me.
TEP: Speaking of movies, provided TQGSC was optioned as a film, would you desire to address the screenplay?
LP: Affirmative, and provided you happen to understand of some actually able Hollywood mover and/or shaker, please hook me up. I cherish to address dialogue, so I anticipate I’d accomplish actually able-bodied with a screenplay.
TEP: You once said you grew up in Ohio on a diet of ardent chocolate and science fiction. Who were some of your favourite authors?
LP: I used to assignment at the community lib, and my activity was to activity to the basement and bring up back copies of aged magazines (this was before Internet … arghgh!). Besides, when I wasn’t active, I’d adumbrate in the stacks and glance at Isaac Asimov and Astonishing Stories, Robert Heinlein, Robert Silverburg, Spider Robinson, Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, plus fantasy love Tolkien and Piers Anthony. I’m actually a sci-fi whore and will glance at anything anybody puts in front of me.
TEP: Any plans for a TQGSC sequel or accomplish you desire to assignment with a brand fresh accumulation of characters?
LP: Able-bodied, I accomplish accept a sequel future outside in Nov of this year, and it’s called Monarch Geeks in Cherish. It follows the exploits of the identical geeky characters (too as Euphoria), and tackles the thorny botheration of what happens when geeks time. Some highlights: attending Comic-Con as homemade superheroes, and putting on Geek Fest, a celebration of gift designed to humiliate those involved too as those watching.
TEP: You accept two sons. How accomplish THEY respond to Mom’s life a self-admitted geek?
LP: Ah! They are small geeks in experience. The oldest one, Austin, goes with me to Comic-Con. Actually, we did a singing contest calm there on a fresh lip-sync video pastime. It was again abundant this year, as Penguin (my publisher) sold the aboriginal textbook at Comic-Con and gave postcards outside for Monarch Geeks in Cherish, so Austin would activity up to bodies near the booth, plam them postcards, and affirm “Acquire my mom’s textbook so she’ll food me!” Noel, the youngest, is also adolescent to accept the accurate acceptation of the chat ‘geek,’ however he’s obsessed with time, aliens, and Harry Potter (at time 4) so I anticipate it’s fate that he’ll be a small geek himself.
TEP: Is your aboriginal book, Lica’s Angel, even in print?
LP: Affirmative … I self published it a hardly any age ago when I idea I’d never amuse a publishing contract. It’s available on Barnes and Blue-blooded’s website too as Amazon and iUniverse. When I accomplish textbook signings, they generally accept it in the store again. I started a sequel to that textbook again, however never got to finish it.
TEP: How did you alter to absorbed in jazz air?
LP: My dad had a killer group of jazz, swing, and Ample Band air, and when I moved out to school, I stole all his Duke Ellington records. Then I met my husband, Chris Klich, a consummate jazz able (sax player), and immediately we accomplish pretty air calm (yuck! Overt sentimentality!) Our most new book, Dejected Skies, even sells lots on CD Child (and you can hear it at his website chrisklich spot com). We again had an originals band where I wrote all the air and lyrics, and that book is even floating encircling outside there also, and can be heard at laurapreble spot com, my air point.
TEP: Which is harder to be: a acceptable teacher, a acceptable writer, or a acceptable musician?
LP: It’s hardest to be all three at the identical age, which is what I activity for. Plus acceptable mom, acceptable wife, and acceptable Olympic discus thrower. (No, that at the end one was aloof to look provided you were paying care.)
TEP: Can you impart us approximately any fresh projects that will be published before the point of the year?
LP: Moreover to Monarch Geeks in Cherish, which comes outside Nov 6 &ndash and I’m hoping every man in the United States, Canada, and all English-speaking countries will acquire a write &ndash I’m again working on a book titled Punk Boy Enigmatic which is not within the Monarch Geek series, and I am in the action of finishing Prom Monarch Geeks, the third textbook in the Monarch Geek series, which will be outside in Fall 2008. I’ve again been writing for Writer’s Digest, and will be doing a workshop at the Southern California Writer’s Convention. And I’m even hoping for a TV exhibit, a film, an appearance on Ellen, and maybe a Pulitzer Love for humorous literature featuring a robot. (Is that a category? It should be!)
Interview by T.E. Pouncey, and reprinted with permission from GeeksofDoom.
