This week the International Kittens of Mystery invite Laptop and Boboko, without whom (as all cats know) Alma Alexander would not have been able to write the latest Worldweaver's book - Spellspam - which is out today.

Because of the premature end to last week's interview (following the tuna incident) Xena has decided to assist Kai this week.

Kai: How do you most help your human with her writing? Do you warm her keyboard? Help her with the typing? Or do you translate her text into Polish with some clever paw strokes?

Xena: You asked that last week.

Kai: So? It's my best question. (flicks tail pointedly and turns to Laptop)

Laptop: I find that pathetic meows from the middle of the office where I am just too far to reach REALLY help her concentration. it helps her focus in the right place - which is, of course, me.

Boboko: Well, there are times I want lovings. Like, NOW. And there are times I want her to clean the litter box. Like, NOW. And there are times that I want her to... oh, wait... you mean she was doing something else?

Kai: Humans ALWAYS think they're doing something else. (climbs onto back of chair, tries to turn, teeters precariously, overbalances, digs in claws and swings precariously from front paws whilst trying to pass off entire incident as pre-planned) Thea's a double seventh - seventh child of two seventh child parents. Those are pretty big litters for humans. So, I'm guessing Thea's really a kitten, isn't she? It's one of those allegorical stories where the heroine has to be a human for marketing purposes but we all know she's really a kitten.

Boboko: Yes but how long are her whiskers?

Laptop: Pah. Humans just get carried away sometimes. Doesn't mean they can aspire to be cats.

Xena: (watching the tempting target of Kai's fluffy tail swing in front of her nose for one too many times) thwap!

Kai: Ow! Are ... are there any magical kittens in this book?

Laptop: There are no such things as NON-magical kittens. In this book or anywhere else. Yes, there's a cat - I'm told that SHE has committed the atrocity of amalgamating me and my silly brother into one creature for her character's cat, but we can both forgive her that. She probably didn't want to hurt our feelings by choosing one over the other. And I fully realise that she couldn't have a cat called Laptop in a book which has to do with cyber magic - humans are easily confused - hence the name she gave the cat in the book.

Boboko: There's a cat in the book?

Kai: (trying to read the autocue while hanging upside down) Yawny raft ot kooq...

Xena (rolls eyes) How would you suggest a cat sells this book to their human? What would your pitch be?

Laptop: We cats, we have known for a long time there is more to the world that you know than just what you can smell or paw or hear, that there are other creatures out there (some of them ARE food, arguably) and that you need to open your mind to the possibilities. And that once you become aware of yourself and what you are and what your place is in all the worlds that you can walk in, anything is possible, really.

Boboko: You DO know that neither of us can read...? But this book was written by She Who Doles Out Treats and Kibble. We like treats and kibble, Lap and I. So buy the book, and help her keep the kibble coming...

Kai: (falls down, shocked) Kibble can be stopped? What about the Kibble Fairy?

Xena: Thwap! (turns to Laptop) Any plans to talk your human into writing some cat-centric mythology. I'm thinking Bast the Egyptian cat goddess.

Laptop: ALL HAIL TO BAST - and don't think we haven't been trying. With the help of the Cat Headed One, we will prevail. And if she doesn't there's always the option of wandering across her keyboard on our own and doing it ourselves. In Polish.

Boboko: Well how was I supposed to know that the pile of treats you wouldn't eat was an offering to Bast and not just something I could finish off?... Sorry, folks. I messed up the sacrifice. I guess the Cat Headed One will have to wait just a little longer for her story... ooooh... SQUIRRELS...

Kai: Squirrels? Where?

Xena: Come back! We haven't finished...

Well, if it's not tuna it's squirrels.

Here's Laptop and Boboko behaving themselves:

And here's Kai and Xena having an animated discussion about third person narrative:

If you'd like to know more about Laptop and Boboko click here

Tags: alexander, alma, books, cats, fantasy, interview, kai, writing, xena, ya

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Virtual Book Tour: Alma Alexander at the Astraldome	Mar. 1st, 2007 @ 12:05 pm

Today the Astraldome welcomes bestselling author of the Jin Shei series, Alma Alexander.

So, same format as before, with the help of two mediums strapped to a supercomputer we are going to astrally project Alma to a place very close to your computer screen. Warning: there is an 'r' in the month so there will be ectoplasm.

Ready? Okay, Windows ESP is loading, the mediums are entering a trance like state - possibly Belgium. Now, concentrate on Alma's picture below. Will her across the astral plane. And hold that image. The astral plane is a slippery place and she may snap back.

Can you see it? Alma's spectral form? Then let the interview commence...

Q1 I hear that Jin Shei has sold over 30,000 copies in hardcover in Spain in only six months. Just how large is the Spanish branch of your family?

Someone I met at one of my many schools, back when I was fifteen or so, grew up to be a Spanish teacher - she lives in Wales and holidays in Spain regularly. Believe it or not, that is my only connection with Spain. The only thing I can say in it with any degree of conviction is "Que?" (you have to imagine the other upside down question mark, my keyboard doesn't do exotics *grin*). The success of this book in Spain was completely unlooked for, utterly confounding, and still hard to believe...

Q2. Has living in a large number of countries and travelling extensively seeped into your writing? Do you find it easier to write about outsiders and 'the other?'

That's cheating, that's two questions.

What can I say? It's two for one night on the astral plane.

Okay, part the first: I would recommend travel as a way of learning people. I make it a point to try and "mingle"; when I was living in New Zealand the opportunity arose to visit Tahiti and I grabbed it - and by the end of my ten days there I could speak a couple of dozen words in the local language, I had engaged in conversations with a local young security guard at my hotel in the only language we had in common (French) although they were peppered with lots of "how do you say" prefixes as I tried to remember the rusty schoolgirl French I'd not touched for years, and I had learned a bunch of traditions and ghost stories and tales of mystery and magic many of which WILL find their way into my writing sooner or later. I've still got my entire African life experience to write about, practically untouched. Travel is wonderful.

Part the second: oh, yes. There's nothing like coming in from outside the circle for clarity of vision of the way things are INSIDE the circle. The things that the insiders don't, will NEVER be able to, see. And will sometimes hate you, the outsider, for pointing out.

Q3. You receive a phone call from a serial killer. He asks you the same question he asked his previous victims. "You have 150 words to sell me your book. 150 words exactly. If I like what you write I'll buy the book. If I don't you die." What would your 150 words be for your new book, Gift of the Unmage?

"Thea Winthrop is a Double Seventh - seventh child of two seventh children - the most magical of the magical, the flowering of her potential eagerly awaited by her family, by her world. There's just one problem - she can't do any magic at all. Before giving up completely and sending her to the Last Ditch School for the Incurably Incompetent, where children of a magical world who are incapable of magic are sent for a decent education while being kept out of harm's way, Thea's desperate parents whisk her back in time into the care of an Anasazi tribal elder for a last attempt at waking the dormant Double Seventh potential. What Thea learns in the shadow of the red mesas of the Southwest will make her realise that she and a handful of other misfit kids from the Last Ditch School are the only ones who can save their world from a hungry evil called simply The Nothing - and that Thea's co-called magical powerlessness is the most potent weapon of all."

How is the serial killer counting the words?

Very scarily using other people's fingers.

A glance towards the silhouetted serial killer. He's deep in thought ... and other peoples' fingers. What's he going to decide? It's ... it's a thumbs up - several thumbs up - for Alma and Thea.

Q4. In Gift for an Unmage Thea attends the Last Ditch School for the Incurably Incompetent. Would you have liked to have gone to that school? Did you?

I didn't go to that school, no, but funnily enough a few of its teachers taught at schools I DID go to. I will (ahem) particularly draw your attention to the Mathematics teacher, Mr Siffer - and later, in the second book (coming next year) the Biology teacher, Mr Crow. (My husband recently bought me a T-shirt that says, "Careful or you'll end up in my novel". He thinks he was kidding.)

It's a nice enough school, as schools go, if it weren't for that moniker and its reputation as a dead-end place for useless misfits - but then, my books redeem the place, and how, so I guess that having gone there will come to be regarded as a plus rather than something to try and hide on your resume...

Q5. If you had the power to select any book, delete its existence from the time line, then give that concept to another writer, what would be that book and who do you think should have written it?

Oof. No fair. These days such books might well be written by my own peer group, by people I consider friends - and quite often the people who I might nominate as replacement-writers will ALSO be people I consider friends. Doing this would not be kind to either. But might I put forward the screenplay for the LOTR movies (as done by Peter Jackson et al) and suggest that they would have been better off giving the job to, well, *me*...? (okay, everyone, put the rocks down. I know the Jackson movies have LOTS of fans. I, however, don't think he did the book justice, he messed with the storyline (leaving out important stuff which WAS in the books and inserting irrelevant nonsense of his own making), and he COMPLETELY failed to get either Aragorn or the Elves. There IS a way of filming these books. I could have written that screenplay, kept the sweep and the drama of the movie and still kept true to the spirit of the book.

Thank you, Alma. The mediums power down, Peter Jackson's lawyers reach for their ouija boards and Alma's ghostly presence returns to whence it came.

Meanwhile, The Gift of the Unmage can be bought from all good bookshops including Amazon in the US and UK

Tags: alexander, astraldome, authors, fantasy, interview, sf, worldweavers, writing, ya

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