Mur Lafferty

Writer, podcast producer, gamer, geek, and even martial artist, Mur Lafferty is a multi-faceted talent and a force to be reckoned with. Hailing from Durham, NC where she lives with her husband and eight year old daughter, Mur churns out fiction and editorials at a breakneck pace. Her fiction works include the Parsec winning Playing For Keeps, Nanovor: Hacked!, Marco and the Red Granny, and my personal favorite The Afterlife Series. 

Mur's podcasts are many, Escape Pod magazine and Angry Robot Books Podcast premiere among them, the seminal author is probably best known as host of  the long running podcast I Should Be Writing " the podcast for wanna-be fiction writers by a wanna-be fiction writer." The award winning podcast follows Mur's trials and tribulations in the publishing world, offers advice to new and beginning authors, and boasts a series of interviews with some of the top names in scifi publishing. 

Mur is also an avid gamer and has written for several RPG's. She currently writes a column for the gaming magazine Knights of the Dinner Table, and in the past she has been a contributor to Games Quarterly, Suicide Girls, and Anime Insider.

Mur also studies Kung fu. No, I'm not making that up. Kung fu. Northern Shaolin five animals style to be exact. And she plays World of Warcraft. And Dragon Age. And Button Men.

Now, when you can move across this rice paper, and leave no trace...

6 Questions with Mur Lafferty:


1. What are your favorite and your least favorite words?

  "Favorite words: Pie, defenestrate, limerent. Least favorite words: It's misuse of words that bug me, and anyone using "nom" as anything but onomatopoeia. (for example, as a noun, "It's time for noms" or verb "I'm going to nom that" or adjective "It was nommy." I just cringed writing that.)"


2. What turns you on creatively, spiritually, emotionally?

  "Reading excellent writing makes me want to write, it moves me in ways that I can't describe. Any story well told can inspire me in a number of ways."


3. What is the closest you have ever come to giving up writing?

  "When I gave up on writing. :) I quit in college because I figured I'd never get better than I was - and others were better than me - and then spent a decade thinking to myself "I want to be a writer" without actually doing anything about it."


4. What is your favorite profanity?

  "Cunt-blossom."


5. What is the strangest thing you have ever done while writing?

  "Uh, nothing leaps to mind. I think one time I laid out Reese's Pieces on my desk and ate one for every hundred words I wrote, to push me along."


6. If heaven exists, what would you like to hear God (or Allah or Yahweh or Odin. Generally the Supreme Being of your choice.) say when you arrive at the pearly gates?

  "Probably what Douglas Adams said the last known message from God: "We apologize for the inconvenience."

Reece's Pieces. I rather love Reese's Pieces.

Thank you to Mur for taking the time to share this. And thanks to you for taking the time to read! If you'd like to know more about Mur Lafferty simply go to the Murverse.

On the menu for tomorrow is comic book master Ben Templesmith! See you then!

Tee Morris

Tee Morris began his writing career with his 2002 historical epic fantasy, MOREVI The Chronicles of Rafe & Askana. In 2005 Tee took MOREVI into the then-unknown podosphere, making his novel the first book podcast in its entirety. He won acclaim and accolades for his cross-genre fantasy-detective Billibub Baddings Mysteries, the podcast of The Case of the Singing Sword winning him the 2008 Parsec Award for Best Audio Drama.
2011 marks Tee's return to fiction with his madcap steampunk adventure, Phoenix Rising: A Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences Novel, written with Pip Ballantine and released by Harper Voyager.


And now, by your command...
  
15 Questions with Tee Morris:

1. What is your favorite word?

  "Enigma. (The word just evokes mystery.)"


2. What is your least favorite word?

  "Nigger. (The hatred behind the word just makes me cringe. I find the word utterly repulsive.)"


3. What decision in your writing career do you regret most?

  "Writing the Social Media how-to books. I did two for podcasting, two for Twitter. I honestly thought they would open doors for me, and I kept getting passed over for speaking events (and even professional jobs) for fly-by-night Social Media Snake Oil Salesmen and the like. The years and the efforts I put into those books could have been spent in fiction."


4. What decision in your writing career are you most thankful for?

  "When I said in 2004 to Evo Terra and Mike Mennenga "Guys, I got an idea. I want to podcast my first novel."


5. What turns you on creatively, spiritually, emotionally?

  "Music. The natural splendor of the world around us (like a gorgeous sunset, the Natural Bridge of Virginia, etc.). Friends."


6. What turns you off creatively, spiritually, emotionally?

  "Politics and the backbiting nature of it. The hypocrisy is sometimes too much to stomach."


7. What is you writing ritual?

  "I select a playlist on iTunes, fire up Scrivener, and then I start working. Usually the music fits the mood of the scene."


8. What sound do you love?

  "My child, laughing."


9. What sound do you hate?

"My child, crying."


10. What was the closest you ever came to giving up writing?

  "When I thought I was facing some close calls, I found something to keep me going. Writing is a part of me that, when I don't do it, I feel "off" in some way."


11. What is the strangest thing you have ever done while writing?

  "It's something I tend to do, if I ever need to take a moment's break. I'll crank up the music and start grooving a bit. If I'm feeling festive, I'll have a glass of wine in my hand when I do it."


12. What is your favorite curse word?

  "Seriously. The word "Cunt."



Why?



When you call someone THAT, it is a point of no return. You have only one direction left when the C-bomb is dropped. It is a commitment.



Two enter the octagon. Only one will leave."


13. What profession other than yours would you like to attempt?

  "I did that already. I was a professional actor. A part of me still enjoys performance when I podcast, but acting and writing are two professions that have a lot in common with one another."


14. What profession would you not like to do?

  "Pretty much, any job seen on Dirty Jobs."


15. If heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the pearly gates?

  "Hi, Tee. You did good. Real good. I'm proud of you."


Wow! I can't believe you did ALL 15! An amazing author and a gentleman to boot, Tee gave me a HUGE portion of his time and I cant thank him enough. If you'd like to know more about illustrious Tee Morris surf over to http://ministryofpeculiaroccurrences.com or drop him a tweet at TeeMonster on Twitter.

And we close yet another interview! I really hope you enjoyed it and be on the lookout for tomorrow's interview with model and actress Mara Marini!