Here is your Wednesday interview schedule:

Ellen Klages at Fuse Number 8: "'ve said before that writers are magpies -- the world is full of shiny things that I need to line my nest, many of them on eBay. In various parts of my (oh-so-cluttered) house are: an ad for the Kix Atomic Bomb Ring (from the Sunday comics); the ring itself (more than 15¢, these days....); six or seven different spinthariscopes (yes, they still work); a 1939 Royal typewriter; a hectograph; a can of Atomite; a model of a V-2 rocket; a 1948 Alamogordo High School yearbook; postcards of White Sands; and a box of old bottle caps, broken tin toys, pieces of Erector sets, marbles, paper labels, Mason jars, and cigar boxes."

Emily Jenkins at Writing and Ruminating: "In That New Animal the adult figures are insensitive to the needs of the child figures, as they are in a number of my other books (Daffodil, Daffodil Crocodile, Toy Dance Party, Skunkdog), but my primary concern is not a lesson for the grown-ups; it is the emotional experience of the child. Or dog. Or stuffed animal. Or rubber ball."

Ally Carter at Miss Erin: "I don’t think I’m brave enough to be a spy, clever enough to be a con-artist, or secure enough to be an actor, so I guess I’ll just beg and plead to be allowed to just stay a writer."

Mark Peter Hughes at Hip Writer Mama: "As far as writing from the POV of a girl, I was just writing a story and a thirteen-year-old girl happened to be the main character. It wasn’t until I’d written a couple of drafts that someone pointed out to me that it was unusual for a man to write from this perspective. I suppose it is, but it didn’t feel that way at the time. I was just doing what authors do--writing a story about a character."

Sarah Darer Littman at Bildungsroman: "After having grown up in England during the IRA bombing campaigns of the early 1970's, I find it disturbing me that many of my fellow Americans seem to think that terrorism was invented on 9/11. I wanted to explore the idea that terrorism isn’t limited to one country or one emotionally loaded date on the calendar – one person's 9/11 is another's 7/18 or 7/7 and although the language in which we express them might be different, feelings like grief and loss are universal."

MT Anderson at Finding Wonderland: "The idea for Octavian's initial predicament came from a half-remembered story about how a similar experiment was undertaken at Cambridge University in the 18th C, under the auspices of the Duke of Montagu. The anecdote captured my imagination--the whole idea of these Enlightenment scholars in that dank, murky university in the midst of the dismal fens working away by candle-glow, believing that they were illuminating the subject of darkness and light while in fact being blind to their own weird biases and ceremonial culture...It fascinated me, and I felt immediately as if I knew the boy who'd result from those experiments. (Though Octavian didn't in the end really resemble Francis Williams, the actual subject of Montagu's putative experiment, beyond a shared knowledge of Greek and Latin...)"

Mitali Perkins at Mother Reader: "Teens care about their faith. Why leave that thread out in our books? The First Daughter books are realistic, contemporary novels, and I can’t imagine a teen in America today not thinking about or confronting the issue of religion."

Plus a bonus short author interview: Christine Marciniak at A Chair, A Fireplace and a Tea Cozy: "When Mike Kissed Emma is about, well... about when Mike kissed Emma. "