Seldom-Asked Questions, #1

So many interesting (and entertaining) questions.  Here are a few.

How did you end up writing nonfiction instead of fiction?

It's not really a question of "instead."  It's a question of timing.  I write fiction all the time, and I fully intend to write novels; I felt called to write TCW, so I did, and it kind of surprised me.  Before that I never had the slightest idea I could write nonfiction.  Storytelling is my first love.

I remember faintly you writing something about yeast as not being vegan food a very long time ago (on LiveJournal), what's the deal with yeast?

Yeast is a fungus.  It's not an animal.  It's totally vegan.  I don't remember ever saying that, and if I did, I must have been on crack, because I've known since tenth grade biology that yeast was a fungus.


I know you went to culinary school and didnt finish it. Why? Is it a career path you wouldn't recomend?

There are several reasons I didn't finish.  1) I love baking but not so much cooking, and at the time, the Texas Culinary Academy didn't offer a pastry course.  2) I couldn't afford it.  3) 99.9% of culinary schools in America are French-based, which means unhealthy, animal-product-laden foods including things like veal.  At the time I was not a vegan, but after being forced to either make veal stock or flunk Stock 101, I realized I might not be able to handle the entire course.  4) Being a chef is grueling, thankless work.  You have no holidays, you spend most of your career working 12 hour shifts sauteeing onions, and unless you have money to open your own restaurant (most of which fail within five years) or are one of the twelve chefs who strike gold on the Food Network, it could take you 20 years to make a living wage.  Plus, the culinary world is incredibly sexist so making it as a woman is ten times harder.  All of those things together convinced me that chefdom was not for me.  I still entertain the notion of opening a vegan cupcake bakery, however.  Maybe someday after I win the lottery.  It can finance my Pagan monastery.

Have you ever had dried pineapple?

Hell yeah.  Love it.  It's so sweet it hurts my teeth, though, so I don't eat it much.

What is your favorite tree?

Oak of any kind, but if I had to pick one variety I'd say the Texas Live Oak.

How do you go about choosing your book topics?

I don't, actually.  They choose me.  Book writing for me is a spiritual and magical act almost like Drawing Down the Moon; Deity and I work together on it, so the topic has to be something that absorbs me so completely I can be open to the energy.  Usually what happens is I dither around for a while making outlines, and then one day BAM! the book seizes me and I write like a fiend for three or four months and it's finished.  It's pretty intense, and it ensures that I won't ever be a book-a-year kind of author.  Any time I try to force the process I end up with writer's block, which is what happened after I finished The Body Sacred.  Silly Sylvan.

And why don't you want a boyfriend? Simply because you like to be single or because you don't have the time right now?

I don't want a boyfriend because I would make a terrible girlfriend.  Also?  The older I get, the higher my standards get, and the world of Pagan men has yet to produce anything close to a potential Mr. Sylvan. 

Who's cooler, pirates or ninjas?

Pirates are sexier, except for the whole raping/pillaging/not bathing thing.  In a fight, however, ninjas would kick nine kinds of pirate ass.

Comments

[NenTara]

I must have misunderstood you on the yeast then :-P

[Mel]

I'm in agreement with you on the pirates/ninjas thing. I really like hearing about your writing process and why you write what.

Thanks for doing this. Its just as fun to see your questions answered as it is to answer them.

[NenTara]

Just for the record: yes, I know very well that yeast is a fungus, that's the reason I got so puzzled by what you wrote, it was probably just one of those "the context makes it sound like you're saying something completely different from what you're saying" :-P