As we prepare for the Winter Blog Blast Tour next week, I have been reading at various places about people's thoughts on author interviews. I've always been partial to interviews with authors I'm interested in and I actually have a slight collection of literary magazines that include these kind of conversations and find them endlessly enjoyable to reread. Here's Andrea Barrett from Glimmer Train back in 2004:

I look both at things about the time and things made at the time. It's interesting in one way to look at an etching made in 1857 of the things on Charles Darwin's desk and it's interesting in another way to look at a painting or an etching made in 1930 about the things someone thought were on Charles Darwin's desk. They say two different things. Some of the things are about 1857 and some are about 1930, but it's all interesting. If there's music that I know from the period, I listen to the music. If I can, if the languages are available to me, I also look at novels and poems written in the period. Even though they may not be about what I'm researching, they tell me something about the tonality of the culture then, about what people are thinking, what things seemed important to them.

Or here's Stephen King from The Paris Review in Fall 2006:

A few years ago I was listening to a book on tape by John Toland called "The Dillinger Days". One of the stories is about John Dillinger and his friends Homer Van Meter and Jack Hamilton fleeing Little Bohemia, and Jack Hamilton being shot in the back by a cop after crossing the Mississippi River. Then all this other stuff happens to him that Toland doesn't really go into. And I thought, I don't need Toland to tell me what happens, and I don't need to be tied to the truth. These people have legitimately entered the area of American mythology. I'll make up my own shit. So I wrote a story called "The Death of Jack Hamilton".

These interviews appeal to me, both because i enjoy the work of these writers but also - more importantly - because I learn from them about being a better writer. If I get stumped or confused or even lost a bit, I can read an old interview and it will likely get me going again. These are writers at work talking about the work and they know what they are doing - and so I learn a bit about what to do as well.

With the Summer Blog Blast Tour I was hoping to take this idea further and have a whole rash of interviews thrown out there with a bunch of interesting authors being asked all sorts of unusual questions by a bunch of interesting bloggers. Here are some of my favorite bits from the SBBT:

Ysabeau Wilce on her early love of history: My family lived abroad and I was obsessed with poor maligned Richard III, so much so that I badged my poor parents into taking me on a driving tour of England, where we saw every inn, castle, and hedgerow that Richard III ever so much as looked at, and went to a memorial service on the anniversary of his death! Tho' I outgrew my peculiar interest in the last Plantagenet King, he did kindle a love of history in me that has informed nearly everything I have done since. (That obsession also taught me that you can't believe everything you read in history books!)

Or Kirsten Miller on naming characters: I collect interesting names. For instance, if I'm in the back of a cab, and I notice that the driver has an unusual name, I'll jot it down in my notebook. (Just the other day, I was driven across town by a cabbie named Bdellatrix. She was a very pleasant lady with the ideal name for a villain. I can already see the character in my head. She'd wear extra-long Lee Press-On Nails and raise chinchillas.)

And Kazu Kibuishi on his influences: My two biggest influences are definitely Jeff Smith and Hayao Miyazaki. After I read Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind and Bone, I knew what I wanted to do with my life, even if it didn't seem (at the time) to be a viable career option.

I really believe - I know - that the right words at the right time can inspire you in ways that are both startling and wonderful. I hope that the SBBT did that for some readers, either on the smallest scale by persuading them to try out a new author or new book, or on a larger level by making them rethink some of their own choices in life. The WBBT is a continuation of this goal, with a host of new authors who have happily shared all sorts of stories about how they write and live and think. We have Christopher Barzak, Laura Amy Schlitz, Jane Yolen, Julie Halpern, David Levithan, Lisa Ann Sandell and more. They have been wonderful to exchange emails with and so excited about the project; on behalf of all the bloggers involved, I could not be more grateful for their time.

There are many things I hope to do - and plan to do - to carve out a bigger space for myself in the national literary conversation, and these multi-blog interview projects are just the start. But they are proving to be so much more than I ever hoped they would be and I'm delighted to be bringing more your way next week.

The tentative master schedule for the Winter Blog Blast Tour will be posted by late tomorrow; check back here daily next week for an interview and links to all other WBBT posts.