Please welcome the hero, Zak Grant,
from Time Runs Away with Her
How did you first meet your writer?
She was thinking about her old high school boyfriend—the one
who liked The Grateful Dead and Zappa so much.
Guy had some taste in music, but he was kind of a lump. You gotta want to do something in this bad
old world! And his politics sucked, just
by the way.
Did you ever think that your life
would end up being in a book?
Why wouldn’t it? My
life has been…bizarre!
What are your favorite scenes in
your book: the action, the dialog or the romance?
Well, my writer didn’t describe MY favorite scene, only the
next morning with Bean’s mom away at that convention. I swear I wasn’t sleeping
that hard. I guess it’s OK, though. Bean
would have been embarrassed. And that
woman of mine’s been through a lot lately, you know?
Do you infiltrate your writer’s
dreams?
I only infiltrate MY WOMAN’s dreams.
What do you like to do when you are
not being actively read somewhere?
I draw and hang out with Bean. And I take care of my Rapidographs. Those
things jam if you use the wrong ink. Gotta
get the portfolio together for art school apps next year. But I’d be drawing anyway. You know what? You have interesting hair. Mind if I just grab the pad here? Go stand over there by the window.
Are you happy with the genre your
writer has placed you in?
I defy genre! True
bizarre-ness does, you know. But I guess
I can live with where I am.
If you could rewrite anything in
your book, what would it be?
I’d like to rewrite that douche-bag Blair somewhere a long
way from here, for good.
Scholar-athlete—right. But maybe
he made that revision himself. Hard to
say.
Do you like the way the book ended?
Wait a minute. I have
to turn over the record…or would you rather hear Anthem of the Sun? Oh—the
ending? I’d be dumb not to.
Would you be interested in a sequel,
if your writer was so inclined?
If it was… bizarre!
What is your least favorite
characteristic your writer has attributed to you?
I don’t say “bizarre” nearly as much as she says I do.
Do have any secret aspirations that
your author doesn’t know about?
I know they’re all straight and stuff, but I’d like to get a
cartoon in The New Yorker. I started
looking at it after Bean’s mom made that crack about Cousin It. Charles Addams is alright, much cooler than
the TV show.
What
do you do for a living?
Nothing
yet. I’m trying not to get drafted and
to get into art school, mostly.
What
is your greatest fear?
Getting
drafted and going to ‘Nam. It’s not
‘cause I’m a wimp or anything. War is
wrong.
What
do you wear when you go to sleep?
Whatever
becomes a legend most. Nah—underpants.
What
is your most prized possession?
My
Rapidographs. All of them. I can’t pick just one.
Who was your first
girlfriend/boyfriend and what do you like most about them?
Bean. She’s a cosmic
woman!
Did you have a pet as a child? What happened to it? How did you feel about that?
My kid brother Eddie had a turtle named The Grinch. I don’t even want to know what happened to
it. Maybe he drowned it in his Lucky
Charms or something. What a way to go! It was around the time my dad split.
What do you think your greatest
weakness is?
Sometimes I think it’s that I don’t like to fight. But sometimes I think that’s the best thing
about me.
What are you proudest of?
My art.
What embarrasses you?
Nothing. You can’t
embarrass me. Dare you.
What is something no one knows about
you? Why do you keep it a secret? And what would happen if everyone found out
about it?
No one knows my girlfriend is a time traveler—well, except
for her best friend and Sam and Father Tollman—oh, and that asshole Blair. You can’t just go around telling people that
your girlfriend dematerializes and shows up in the freaking 19th century. If people heard me saying that they’d think
I’m even more bizarre than I am, and not in a good way. That I could deal with, but if they said
anything bad about Bean, I don’t know what I’d do. She’s been through enough.
What do you find most appealing in
men/women?
I like people who make music and art.
What do you find most unappealing in
men/women?
I really hate bullies.
What do you like most about where
you live?
Stormkill’s right on the Hudson River. It’s full of great old houses and cool stuff
to draw. The River’s really beautiful. If you watch the River for half an hour, you
see every color there is. Plus you can
get a train into The City easy and go to The Fillmore.
What’s your favorite thing to do on
a rainy Sunday?
Put on The Dead and spread!
What word makes you the happiest?
Love.
What is your least favorite word?
Earwax.
What
other profession would you like to try?
I
think if I couldn’t make enough money doing art, I might like to teach it. Show little kids the pen and ink, you know? But not for a while. I want to try really doing it first.
What
would you not like to do?
Hurt
anyone. Even Blair, really. Even though it’s tempting.
Do you believe in ghosts/evil
spirits/mysticism? Would you spend the night in a remote haunted house?
I kind of have to--being as my girlfriend is a time
traveler, you know. Ghosts don’t scare
me. I just worry about Bean getting
stuck in 1945 or something.
What is your most favorite
memory?
The first time I walked Bean to her locker and I saw she
had a drawing of mine taped up inside it.
That and the first Christmas Mom and Eddie and I were in Stormkill.
If you knew a zombie apocalypse
was coming in one week, what would you do?
The zombie apocalypse?
That’s bizarre. Zombies? I think
it’s gonna be the Bomb unless we get together and do something about it. And I don’t know whether I’d take off with
Bean somewhere if there were only a week—or go down protesting and trying to
stop it.
Have you ever thought about
getting a tattoo, what would it be and where? If not, what if you had to?
Tattoos are kinda…I don’t know. I’ve seen some really cool ones, but I’d be
afraid I’d get sick of the same thing all the time. I’d rather make up a really good fake one
that washed off.
What do you admire about your
parents?
They weren’t afraid to do what they wanted—either of
them. It’s not easy for either of them
alone, and their lives weren’t what they’d planned.
What’s the worst/weirdest thing
you did as a kid?
I was a jerk to my mom for a while after Dad left. But that’s over.
Thanks
again for visiting with us today !!!!
Any
time. Here’s your picture. Bizarre, huh?
* * * * *
Time Runs
Away with Her
Christine
Potter
Time Travel Romantic Suspense, 74k
Time Travel Romantic Suspense, 74k
It’s not easy being Bean. Bean
Donohue lives for her guitar, but her mom threw her out of the house during a
snowstorm for singing. No way she’s going to get permission to go
see The Grateful Dead at the Fillmore East.
Zak, her
almost-boyfriend, will get drafted if he doesn’t get into art school, pot makes
Bean paranoid, and her best friend can’t stop talking about sex. 1970’s not for
wimps—but neither was 1885...or 1945. So why does Bean keep sliding backwards
in time?
Excerpt:
Although it
was cooler than it had been upstairs, the night was still close, and the heat
had made Bean slow and sleepy. I could wring out my hair like a
dishrag, and it would dribble on the floor. The
party swirled around her: ladies in rustling dresses of blue and yellow,
gentlemen in evening jackets laughing together.
At the other
end of the room was a cut crystal bowl, full of what looked like iced tea. Bean
felt like she could dive into it. Standing in a circle around the punch bowl
were a few more men in evening jackets.
How can
you even think of wearing a jacket in this weather? She wandered over to the punch,
which smelled wickedly alcoholic, like the bottle of rum Juuulia bought to make
eggnog every Christmas. If she picked up one of the tiny glass cups next to the
bowl and ladled punch into it, would it seem to those men in their stifling
evening wear as if the glass were filling itself? That was kind of amusing,
actually, but probably not a great idea. Besides, the stuff smelled like it
would make you more thirsty, not less.
Maple leaves
outside rustled again in the breeze, and the breeze offered no relief. She
thought about Zak, and wondered if she’d be too miserable and sweaty to hug him
right then, if he were with her. Which, of course, he was not. She thought
about her room at home, her all-year Christmas lights, her guitar. She closed
her eyes and tried to will herself back.
Nothing
happened.
Outside, in
the garden, Edwina laughed again. What a wonderful laugh she had! It sounded
like it came straight from her belly, like she wasn’t afraid of being
un-ladylike. Was she the one who had been crying on Bean’s
last trip to this time and place? It certainly seemed like the same evening:
the party, the Japanese lanterns, the night’s humid breeze...
Author Bio:
Christine Potter lives in a small
town not far from the setting of Time
Runs Away With Her, near the mighty Hudson River, in a very old (1740)
house with two ghosts. According to a
local ghost investigator, the ghosts are harmless, “just very old spirits who
don’t want to leave.” She doesn’t want them to.
Christine’s
house contains two pipe organs (her husband is a choir director/organist), two
spoiled tom cats, and too many books.
She’s also a poet, and the author of two collections of verse, Zero Degrees at First Light, and Sheltering in Place. Christine taught English and Creative Writing
for years in the Clarkstown Schools. She
DJ’s free form rock and roll weekly on Area24radio.com, and plays guitar,
dulcimer, and tower chimes.
Website: http://chrispygal.weebly.com/
Facebook
book page for Time Runs Away: * https://www.facebook.com/beanstravels?fref=ts
Twitter:
@chrispygal
Giveaway:
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