Thanks for the ask!

Absolutely. See, I moved to the UK from Minnesota seven years ago and I experienced a period of instability due to culture shock. At the time I was writing the first draft to Guardians of Las, I had been here... I think it was something like 3 years at that point - anyway, I had troubles for more than one reason, but a large part was that things were similar-but-not. Sometimes, I felt like I was living on a completely different planet.

It's a weird feeling, being the outsider. Things people take for granted as the norm, aren't to you and there was more than one occasion where I either missed the cue, or just didn't have a clue.

Illthdar was a way of expressing the feelings of otherness immigrants can experience by dropping the reader into a similar-but-not world where every bit of logic that we cling to, to rationalise our lives doesn't exist. The chaos is normal, and when something is normal it isn't questioned, and when we don't ask questions we fail to grasp the implications of reality. I want readers to come away from the Illthdar series really taking a hard look at their own lives and society and ask themselves if not questioning the normal is really safe.

Thanks for this.

Things that make me happy:

Tomatoes ripe and still warm from the summer sun

One or both kids coming over for cuddle time

Cats treating me like an oversized, bald, kitten

Writing

Gosh, thanks for the ask!

Random facts:

When she was still alive, my paternal grandmother owned a quilting store in Tennessee. The final gifts we got from her were two homemade quilts - one of which for out first child when they were born.

I worked several years at one of the largest food shelves in Minnesota. My lasting legacy was painting the murals as part of a dedication in a renaming of the food shelf and clothing shelf.

#espnWtop10: WCWS edition