I’d like to welcome Teresa and Bill Peshel to the blog for #ThisorThatThursday!
Hardest thing about being a writer:
Teresa: Getting those words on the page and out of my head!
Bill: Finishing what I start.
Easiest thing about being a writer:
Teresa: Ideas are everywhere. They’re piled up in heaps in corners, begging for attention.
Bill: Plotting out a story. The first draft is really hard but once it’s there, I can rewrite it.
Things you need for your writing sessions:
Teresa: To have finished my daily hour and 15 minutes of online solitaire. I’m really good at it!
Bill: The willpower to get started without getting distracted by the internet.
Things that hamper your writing:
Teresa: Having to sit down and see my beautiful vision turn into clunky words. Also, I MUST finish my hour and 15 minutes of solitaire before I can write a word, even on deadline.
Bill: Self-loathing, depression, and fear of being discovered a fraud. You know, the usual writer anxieties.
Something you’re really good at:
Teresa: I’m really good at solitaire. I play at www.worldofsolitaire.com and have scored in the top 50 leaderboard on MANY of the hundreds of variations. Look for tdbpeschel or tbpeschel.
Bill: Naming any popular pop song from the ’70s to the ’90s within the first 10 seconds.
Something you’re really bad at:
Teresa: Bill says I’m perfect as I am. How about getting our adopted cats to love me. They don’t, despite being rescued from the PetSmart. They’re ungrateful.
Bill: Playing the guitar, no matter how expensive the guitar I bought or the lessons I’ve taken. Teresa here: he’s right!
Favorite music or song:
Teresa. I dunno. Music is aural wallpaper. I have eclectic tastes for my wallpaper: electronica, big band, jazz, classical, original video game soundtrack. No country after the death of Hank Williams. No vocals.
Bill: I’m a simple man. I like nothing but the best. If the song is lyrically interesting and melodic, if it’s witty or emotionally deep, I love it. I grew up in the late ’70s and early ’80s so that’s my favorite era.
Music that drives you crazy:
Teresa: Irritating lyrics that don’t make any sense. Too loud or banging. May God save me from awful guitarists playing too loud at the farmers’ market.
Bill: Modernist, atonal opera.
Favorite smell:
Teresa: Vanilla. Good top soil. The scent of flowers. A scent must be strong for me to smell it as I have a very poor nose.
Bill: Cinnamon, fresh coffee, mint, and peppermint.
Something that makes you hold your nose:
Teresa: Cat hork and cleaning products to remove cat hork.
Bill: You never forget the first dead mouse you didn’t get out of the attic in time.
Last best thing you ate:
Teresa: Last night’s ice cream sundae of Tillamook Coffee Almond, hot fudge, whipped cream, and nuts. We enjoyed the sundaes as a reward for spending the entire day at Cozy Fete.
Bill: I added beer to wash down my ice cream sundae.
Last thing you regret eating:
Teresa: I avoid eating anything I don’t like to eat. Fortunately, I like eating a wide variety of food!
Bill: A diner served me a Rueban in which the brisket was so gristly and thick, it was inedible. I hate leaving food on my plate but I had to here.
Things you always put in your books:
Teresa: Complicated characters who feel real. Even minor characters have complete lives although I can’t put them into the narrative. But I know their backstories.
Bill: I always put in humor. Even a grim story needs some leavening.
Things you never put in your books:
Teresa: Gratuitous violence, sex, obscenities, or swearing. There better be a darn good reason!
Bill: Politics. Nothing dates a book worse or drives away half the audience than what is in essence propaganda.
Things to say to an author:
Teresa: Your book really meant something to me. You took me out of myself for a while.
Bill: I bought all your books (even though I haven’t read any of them) and I recommended them to all my friends.
Things to say to an author if you want to be fictionally killed off in their next book:
Teresa: This hasn’t happened to me yet but it has to Bill!
Bill: I reviewed an author’s debut novel and wrote that her determination to be humorous reeked of “flop sweat.” She murdered me in her next book. Lee Goldberg asked permission to kill me in one of his Mr. Monk novels, but as a thank you for favorably reviewing his books. See! You can get killed either way.
Favorite books (or genre):
Teresa: I like romance, romantasy, science-fiction, fantasy, and Agatha Christie. I’m an omnivorous reader so if it’s good, I’ll read it.
Bill: I read very widely, which is why we have 8,000 books in our house. Mysteries, biographies, histories, books by and about writers, true crime, and in my early years a LOT of fantasy and science fiction.
Books you wouldn’t buy:
Teresa: Hardcore pornography; gruesome, blood-soaked horror; or diet books.
Bill: Same as above plus fashionable literary novels. They’re as ephemeral as mayflies and have just as much heft after their day in the sun is over.
Best thing you’ve ever done:
Teresa: Marrying Bill and having my children.
Bill: Marrying my second wife (Teresa).
Biggest mistake:
Teresa: Too many of them so we pretend they never happened and move on.
Bill: Marrying my first wife.
Besides writing, what’s the most creative thing you’ve done:
Teresa: Gardening! It’s art in four dimensions. You’ve also never seen creative fiction like a gardening catalog. I also design quilts as a highwire act. I don’t know what the finished quilt will turn out until I’m done.
Bill: Creating Teresa’s three-minute video introduction for her presentation at the International Agatha Christie conference in Torquay, England. I wrote the script for her to narrate as if she was introducing a documentary on Agatha’s films, complete with clips.
A project that didn’t quite turn out the way you planned it:
Teresa: My gardening efforts. The plan is so much better than the slug-eaten, weed-infested reality. Same with the quilts I make. But the plants grow and the quilts keep people warm at night so it’s all good.
Bill: Teresa’s two-shelf rolling bookcase. I never could settle on a final design which is why it took a year and a half to build when I could have bought and assembled an Ikea bookcase.
Some real-life story that made it to one of your books:
Teresa: I put a lot of history, science, and soil-building into my science-fiction romance. I’m terraforming Mars and it was a great moment when a reader who’s a soil scientist said I got it right.
Bill: I set one of my Mark Twain/Sherlock Holmes stories in Heidelberg, Germany. I was invited to visit one of the dueling clubs one drunken night in the ’70s and was shown how they wielded their swords to leave decorative facial scars. Since Twain stayed in Heidelberg for several months, it was easy to integrate my memories of that night with his fictional encounter with Irene Adler.
Something in your story that readers think is about you, but it’s not:
Teresa: So few people have read my books that this hasn’t come up yet. I have watched over 300 Agatha Christie films to review them but those are her stories, not mine, so no one confuses me with a serial killer or Poirot.
Bill: My first wife complimented me on my portrayal of her in a short story. Since she was pleased, I didn’t have the heart to tell her I’d written it long before I’d met her.
