#ThisorThatThursday Author Interview with Erica Miner
/
I’d like to welcome Erica Miner to the blog for #ThisorThatThursday!
A few of your favorite things: Roses. BBQs. Summer in San Diego. The ocean. Writing. Lecturing.
Things you need to throw out: Those size 2 jeans that I never again will be able to wear. Sigh.
Things you need for your writing sessions: Peace and quiet. My backless desk chair.
Things that hamper your writing: Noise. Interruptions (my husband is usually the guilty one).
Things you love about writing: Telling stories!
Things you hate about writing: Starting from scratch with a blank screen in front of me.
Hardest thing about being a writer: Putting aside all distractions and committing to the process.
Easiest thing about being a writer: Expressing my desire to tell stories. When the creative juices are flowing, this is the easiest thing ever.
Favorite foods: Mangoes are #1, but pretty much every fruit on the planet, especially tropical.
Things that make you want to gag: Beets and lima beans
Favorite music or song: As a writer of Opera Mysteries, of course I’m a classical music geek. Favorite opera is by Puccini, composer of the famous La Bohème and Madame Butterfly: his first big hit, Manon Lescaut, is filled with youthful passion and endlessly beautiful melodies.
Music that drives you crazy: Heavy Metal, Rap, Country Music.
Favorite smell: Croissants baking
Something that makes you hold your nose: diesel fumes
Last best thing you ate: A fresh, perfectly ripe mango, so ripe you could almost drink it from a straw.
Last thing you regret eating: Chocolate that was almost all lecithin and lacking in true chocolate flavor.
Favorite places you’ve been: Italy, France, Switzerland, San Francisco, San Diego, New York
Favorite books (or genre): The classics: Dickens, Austen, the Brontës.
Books you wouldn’t buy: Anything gratuitous violence and/or mistreatment of kids or animals
Most daring thing you’ve ever done: Waterskiing.
Something you chickened out from doing: Diving off a high board.
The nicest thing a reader said to you: ‘Death by Opera is better than Death by Chocolate!’
The craziest thing a reader said to you: ‘You can’t see the stage from the Met Opera orchestra pit.’ That is patently false. Anyone who’s ever sat in that pit knows better.
About Erica:
Formerly a Metropolitan Opera Orchestra violinist for 21 years, ERICA MINER now enjoys a multi-faceted career as an award-winning author, lecturer, screenwriter, and arts journalist.
Known for “Bringing Murder and Music together” Erica’s 3-part Julia Kogan “Opera Mystery” novel series is due for re-publication by Level Best Books starting in September 2022. The first novel draws on Erica’s real-life experiences working at the Met. The series continues with novels that take place at Santa Fe and San Francisco Opera.
Erica’s debut novel, Travels with my Lovers, won the Fiction Prize in the Direct from the Author Book Awards. Her screenplays have won awards in the Santa Fe, WinFemme and Writer’s Digest competitions. She writes for such arts websites as BroadwayWorld.com, USBachtrack.com and LAOpus.com.
A resident of the Pacific Northwest, Erica is a top speaker and lecturer on opera and writing. Her presentation venues include the Seattle Symphony the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at University of California San Diego and University of Washington; the Creative Retirement Institute at Edmonds College (Seattle); and Wagner Societies on both coasts and Sydney, Australia.
Let’s Be Social:
https://www.facebook.com/erica.miner1
