#ThisorThatThursday Author Interview with Mary Dutta
/I’d like to welcome the amazing Mary Dutta to the blog for #ThisorThatThursday.
Things you never want to run out of: coffee and half-and-half
Things you wish you’d never bought: The air fryer collecting dust in the closet
Hardest thing about being a writer: Getting plot twists right
Easiest thing about being a writer: Brainstorming the start of a new story
A few of your favorite things: Mechanical pencils, yellow legal pads
Things you need to throw out: All the annual planners I never used
Favorite foods: Any variation on pork and potatoes
Things that make you want to gag: oysters
Something you’re really good at: Teaching
Something you’re really bad at: Directions
Favorite music or song: Anything I can sing along to
Music that drives you crazy: Anything electronic
Favorite smell: Lilacs
Something that makes you hold your nose: Roses
Things you always put in your books: Humor
Things you never put in your books: intense violence
Favorite books (or genre): Nowadays, mysteries. Back in the day, Victorian novels
Books you wouldn’t buy: Horror or anything graphically violent
Favorite things to do: Reading, cooking, hanging out with the people I love
Things you’d run through a fire or eat bugs to get out of doing: Camping (which I imagine includes running through a fire and eating bugs)
Best thing you’ve ever done: Having my kids
Biggest mistake: Waiting too long to start writing fiction
Besides writing, what’s the most creative thing you’ve done: Designed classes so I get to teach on cool things like the Marvel Cinematic Universe
A project that didn’t quite turn out the way you planned it: The novel that lives in a drawer
About Mary:
Mary Dutta is the winner of the New England Crime Bake Al Blanchard Award for her short story “The Wonderworker,” which appears in Masthead: Best New England Crime Stories. Her work can also be found in numerous anthologies including the Anthony-nominated Land of 10,000 Thrills: Bouchercon Anthology 2022. She is a member of Sisters in Crime and the Short Mystery Fiction Society. She lives outside of Birmingham, Alabama (the Magic City) and teaches at The University of Alabama at Birmingham. Visit her at marydutta.com and enjoy her blog at Writers Who Kill.