Happy Halloween! I’d like to welcome author Alethea Lyons to the blog for a #ThisorThatThursday interview.

Favorite thing that you always make time for: Aside from family, writing and reading. It takes a lot of time, so my social life goes out the window, but I’m okay with that.

The thing you’ll always do just about anything to avoid: Big parties where people will be doing anything competitive. Sorry to my friends who all seem to love boardgames, but I absolutely hate it and will self-sabotage.

Things you need when you’re in your writing cave: Since I started having to grab whatever time I could around my toddler, this list has basically dropped to ‘something to write with’ even if that’s just my phone and a five-minute break.

Things that distract you from writing: The two-year-old is pretty distracting! Seriously though, I find it hard to multitask, so if I keep getting e-mails or other projects are intruding, that’s difficult. Grating noises outside are difficult for my migraines, so if I am home alone and can have music, I do, just so outside noises are less noticeable.

The thing you like most about being a writer: Spinning a story out of something tiny. A perfectly crafted sentence.

The thing you like least about being a writer: Marketing and querying.

Things you will run to the store for in the middle of the night: Sometimes I wish I could run to the store for ice cream. Mostly, my emergency late night shops have been for milk when I’ve either just gotten home from a holiday or I’ve run out late. I need a cup of tea in the morning.

Things you never put on your shopping list: Tuna. It makes me really sick, so I won’t have it in the house. I will only buy coffee very reluctantly. I hate the smell of that too, but I have to get it for my mother-in-law.

The coolest thing you’ve bought online: Technically my husband’s purchase first and I then got him the same present. We each have a pair of battle lightsabers. It makes for quite the show in the back garden. He has the advantage being trained in staff fighting (and they link to make a lightsaber staff), whereas I’m a fencer and have to remember a lightsaber doesn’t have a guard.

The thing that you will most remember about your writing life: The feeling of coming down from a phone call to tell my husband that books 1.5 and 2 of my series had been picked up. I sat on the couch and cried.

Something in your writing life that you wish you could do over: Notifying people of the offer I had. I’d word it differently and I’d ask for more than two weeks.

Something you wanted to be when you were a kid: Astronaut when I was little, then astrophysicist until I was about sixteen.

Something you do that you never dreamed you’d do: Write! It’s not enough to earn a living, but I never thought I’d have a book anyone would read, let alone published books and stories.

The best job you ever had: I count writing, even though it doesn’t make me any money. Job that I actually made a living at, though? Probably a role that was basically ‘problem solver’ and making things more efficient.

The worst job you ever had: Working on the line at a scampi factory. So disgusting my mom would plastic-wrap the car before picking me up, and I had to hop over the wall of the parking lot behind our house so I could go in the back gate and straight into the walk in shower rather than go through the house.

Favorite things to do: Play with my kid, write, read, travel with my husband, walk in the countryside, play my violin, sing. I’m pretty easy to please.

Things you’d run through a fire or eat bugs to get out of doing: Playing an instrument in front of someone, especially if I know they’re good at playing it. Working in a fish factory again.

The one thing you cook/bake that is better than a restaurant dish: Not sure it compares to a restaurant dish, but my proudest baking achievement is that I can make candy cane cookies that taste as good as Grandma’s and I have a better method for making them.

The one thing you cooked/baked that turned out to be an epic disaster: One of the first years I made Thanksgiving dinner, I forgot to put the eggs in the pumpkin pies. They tasted great… for pumpkin goop.

About Alethea:

Alethea (she/ze) writes various forms of SFF, with a particular love for science-fantasy, dark fantasy, dystopias, and folklore. Many of her works take place at the intersection between technology and magic. Ze enjoys writing stories with subtle political and philosophical messages, but primarily wants zir stories to be great tales with characters readers will love. She also has soft spots for found family, hopeless romances, and non-human characters. Zir short stories can be found in a variety of publications and links for these are on her website.

Alethea lives in Manchester, UK with her husband, little Sprite, a cacophony of stringed instruments, and more tea than she can drink in a lifetime.

Let’s Be Social:

Website: https://alethealyons.wixsite.com

Social media: https://linktr.ee/alethearlyons