HANNAH MEREDITH( Cont.) INTERVIEW
HANNAH MEREDITH( Cont.) INTERVIEW
MFRW: What’ s your most embarrassing experience?
HM: I’ ve worn glasses since I was a child. When I entered high school, I decided“ being seen” was more important than“ seeing.” This led to much awkwardness. Every morning I greeted a little boy waiting for his bus, only to discover it was a childshaped sign holding a School Zone placard. I sat on a girl whose dress matched her chair. But it was when I couldn’ t find my date at a school dance— every boy there seemed to have on the same blue-shirt, khaki-pants combination— that I gave up on vanity and put my glasses back on.
MFRW: If you were stranded on a tropical island, whom would it be with? You can choose any living, deceased. or mythical figure.
HM: My husband! Yeah, this sounds like a cop-out, but he’ s the kindest, most interesting, most understanding man I have ever met. He“ gets” me. He makes me laugh. And I suspect together we could figure out how to get off that island.
MFRW:
What do you do to relax and recharge your batteries? HM: Travel! I’ m infected with wanderlust. I’ ve been fortunate enough to visit all fifty states and to travel to six of the seven continents. Sorry, Antarctica is not on my
list— too cold.
MFRW:
HM:
Tell us about your latest book. Where do your story ideas usually come from?
My latest solo novel is Song of the Nightpiper, a fantasy romance with a quasimedieval setting. The characters of Faulk and Anlin arrived in my head fully formed, and I couldn’ t resist writing their tale.
Most of my story ideas just pop into my mind, most often when I’ m doing some mindless task like vacuuming or folding laundry. I clearly envision characters involved in a specific situation, and then I expand from there by asking a series of“ what if” questions.
MFRW: What kind of research do you do for a book?
HM: Probably way too much. I have an inquisitive mind that wants to know everything my characters know, even if most of this will never appear in a book. The internet has made all this information easily retrievable, although I still like to use period books. For instance, I used my antique copy of Paterson’ s Roads( a Regency era travel guide) to carefully trace the journeys of both main characters to“ the house by the sea” in Home for Christmas which appears in Christmas Revels IV.
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