Name: A.S. King

Novel: Still Life With Tornado

Available: October 11, 2016

Who’s your favorite author, living or dead? Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

What’s your favorite thing about your book? When I write a book I never think of the future cover. I have many favorite things about this book on the inside, but the cover designer knocked it out of the park. Since we’d be here a while if I explained the reasons I love certain things inside the book, I’m going to go with: The Cover.  

If you could spend one year on a deserted island with one character from literature, who would you choose? Max from Where the Wild Things Are but the island would have to have the Wild Things on it. Because that would be fun.

Where do you write? After many years writing in a dark basement that I shared with mice and snakes (which I still believe should have canceled each other out) I now write in a small office with actual windows where actual sunlight comes in. I also do a lot of my writing in airplanes and airports.

Who is your favorite hero or heroine of history? Every woman who ever actively fought for my equal rights and my daughters’ equal rights. I don’t take those rights for granted, and knowing there were people out there fighting for me encouraged me to join in. I don’t plan on stopping.

Do you tweet? What’s the funniest thing you’ve ever tweeted? I tweet at @AS_King. I have no idea what the funniest thing I ever tweeted was. Though that time I left the R out of a tweet to Changing Hands Bookstore and then left my house for hours only to return to see that I’d thanked them for the awesome “sh*t” instead of “shirt” might have been my most embarrassingly funny tweet.

What is your favorite season? Autumn. Always autumn. Bring on the jeans and flannel shirts, man.

If you could teleport anywhere in the known universe right now, where would you go? This question is too difficult to answer. I could say “anywhere with a beach” but what I’d really mean is “anywhere with a beach but on an entirely different distant planet where I could meet new species of intelligent beings.” And so forth. So…anywhere with a beach.

Do you have any writing rituals? I used to. I no longer have any rituals. I, myself, live inside of a tornado. I go where the wind takes me. I do have a mechanical pencil from 1983 that I always use to edit. One time I lost it for a few months and I freaked out but I found it again so the balance of the universe is now okay.

What is your idea of earthly happiness? Probably kittens.

What is the best concert you’ve ever been to? This is an impossible question to answer. So I’ll say the Twenty Øne Piløts gig I saw this summer was pretty amazing.

What are you currently working on? A novel that has something to do with potatoes, a fountain, and a trash can.

Get your copy of Still Life With Tornado!