Talk Soup

As part of my half-assed effort to get more followers, I joined this Insecure Writer's Group thingy that posts the first Wednesday of the month.  So here's one of my many insecurities.

Here's another thing I Tweeted about and then decided to make a blog entry about.  Only this time no one asked me too.  Make it so anyway...

If there's one thing I love blogging about, it's my own stories:

Which is very true.  For all the other blogging I do, I could go on for really a whole 'nother novel's worth about the novels I write.  From the major plot points on down to the inspiration to character names.  Or fun facts like, did you know I wrote cameos for myself into some of the "Tales of the Scarlet Knight" stories?  Of course I don't use my name and I don't get any dialog.  I'm just the fat guy in the baseball cap who is cowardly hiding by the salty snacks in a convenience store during a robbery.  In a later story I appear at the museum gift shop to buy stuff.  Take that, Hitchcock!

I could go on slightly less long--though I have gone on plenty on this blog and the old one--about my whole writing process.  That would probably include what I order at Starbucks and Panera Bread when I'm writing.  (Answer:  venti unsweetened shaken green tea at Starbucks and usually regular iced tea or Diet Pepsi at Panera Bread, sometimes with a cookie.)

To me (and no one else) that's a lot more interesting than personal stuff.  You know the "boxers or briefs" kind of stuff that doesn't really matter.  (Answer:  briefs.)  Or if you ever watched "Finding Forrester" those are the kind of questions that aren't "soup questions" according to Sean Connery.  Because according to him there are two kinds of questions: those we ask out of politeness/making conversation/general nosiness and those we ask because we legitimately care.  So when the young writer asks why the soup tastes different that's a legitimate question because he wants to know what the hell he's eating.

So when I did interviews for previous stories (only a very few) to me questions about the book are soup questions.  Questions about me are not.  I get that people are curious about the author, mostly because they want to know how much of the author is in the book.  (As I said earlier, I have a real part in the book!)  But really that I wear briefs in no way matters to the book or its characters, especially since a lot of the characters are female.


So in short, that's why interviews make me grumpy.  It's like with job interviews where you have to give all these bullshit answers.  Even dumber in job interviews is the interviewer should know they're bullshit answers, so why even bother asking?  Oh, right, the Supreme Court says we can't just hire someone based on a head shot or because he/she went to the same fraternity/sorority, so we have to make it look like we're trying really hard to find someone qualified and not just someone attractive or a crony.  No soup questions for you!

Like job interviews, though, I suppose there's no way around it, except to go hide in a cave or something.  But then how are you supposed to sell books from a cave?  Life's a bitch that way.