An early post this week as I’m playing along with the #PitchWars ‘ask me anything’ game #PitchwarsAMA. For those of you don’t know what #PitchWars is, it’s a twitter competition where aspiring authors can “win” a published author as a mentor for a month. And even better than that, you get to make new friends with a whole bunch of writing folk who are pretty darn cool.

To while away the time as the mentors pick their mentees we play lots of fun games like #PitchwarsAMA. So for this one, I opened myself up to the #PitchWars folk to ask anything they liked about writing or life or anything inbetween…..

@winellroad – If you could go back to one day, one moment, in your life so far, when would it be?

This is a hard one. Obvious choice would be the day my girl was born, but I vomited through that, so pass. Or my wedding day. But that’s too obvious. Something from my travelling days? Nah, too many good ones of those…hmmmm. Let’s go back to when I was a teenager. My dad (no longer with us) used to drive me all around northern NSW to tennis tournaments and when we were on our long drives I’d sit with my feet on the dashboard and we’d discuss history and politics and books and travel, just the two of us, hours at a time. If I could have another such moment with the man who was the greatest single influence on my life, that would be worth going back for.

‏@EGMooreWriter – this one’s super serious. Genie or unicorn?

Well, when I think of Genies I either think of the genie from Aladdin (Robin Williams), who would be totally awesome to have around, or the genie from the Timtam add who grants the wish of a packet of Timtams that never runs out. Now both of those options are pretty appealing, but, a genie can only grant 3 wishes, and they are trapped in their lamp, and I don’t like the idea of that, so I pick UNICORN – magic and free and I always wanted a horse growing up.

‏@hayley_stone – If you could spend the day with any of the characters that you’ve written, who would it be and what would you do?

Another hard one. We writers spend a lot of time in our heads with our characters and I would happily spend a day with any one of them in real life. Even the ‘evil’ ones, because they’re interesting. It would be easy to pick one of the romantic interests, but I think….maybe…I’ll chose Hattie from This Shadow Life. Hattie is a secondary character, but oh so important. She’s a feisty old duck (in her 80s) who has a flair for the dramatic and has a past we don’t know a lot about, but we know it was juicy. I think Hattie and I would take in a stage show and then go to a pub for a counter dinner where I’d pry out all her secrets. What was she doing driving along the quiet country road in a car ‘borrowed’ from that famous actor and what made her crash?

@EGMooreWriter – dwarves or leprechauns? And why?

Thorin

Leprechauns have a bit of a rep for being mischievous, but they do have magic powers and pots of gold, but if the dwarf looks anything like Thorin from the Hobbit movie, I’m going with dwarves. Strong, sexy, dark side, good with a sword, hero. Sold.

So, there are the questions and answers. As part of the fun, I get to tag someone else to play and I tag….fellow Aussie writer Kate Foster @winellroad

If anyone else has any burning questions about writing or life or anything in between, feel free to post in the comments.

S