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4.
AOTW: If you could be a character from a fantasy novel (your own included), movie or game, who would you be? Why?
Carol Hughes: I'd be Willy Wonka because quite frankly what could be better than having your own chocolate factory?
Meredith Ann Pierce: Well, of course, I'm every character in every fantasy novel, movie, or game I every read, wrote, watched or played. We all are! That's why we do it (read, write, watch, and play them), in order to experience the lives of these fantasy characters vicariously. I think our production and consumption of imaginative media as adults and teens is just a natural extension of the imaginative play we all engaged in as children. I could rant on and on about this, but I won't. Instead, I'll just pick a character that I've had great fun with recently: I'd be Claire Randall Frasier, the time traveling heroine of Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series. Why? Because she's passionate, intelligent, loyal, and determined. She never gives up! I love her, and I'd love to be her.
Mark L. Williams: Hmm... maybe "His Own Ghost" from the great, underrated California Bloodstock (I'm stretching definitions to include magical realism here), or the titular "Davy" from Edgar Pangborn's book. From my own work? It might be interesting to be the post-Camelot Merlin from the second Danger Boy book --- or maybe, for a while, one of the dinosaurs!
Nancy Springer: I'd want to be somebody happy, unscarred, and that's not an easy sort of character to find in a genre that's largely about fighting evil and making heroic sacrifices in order to save the world. But I can think of one such character: Tom Bombadil, in The Hobbit. He seems very complete in himself, at peace and attuned to the small pleasures of life. He doesn't go off and do heroic things; he just tends his own garden. His worthiness shows in the way he simply is. Perhaps you can tell by this choice of character that I'm nearing retirement age?
Tamora Pierce: I'd be one of my own characters, Daine, whose wild magic gives her a connection to animals (at least vertebrates) which enables her to communicate and many times to heal them. I have a lot to do with animals in my everyday life, and bitterly regret each one that died when I couldn't help it. Even simple communication would be nice, particularly when I'm riding in a cab with a yowling cat, and there's no way to explain so s/he will understand why we're having this experience and that it'll be temporary (or even that we're going home).
Patrice Kindl: May I be a character in a ghost story? I would like to be a Screaming Skull haunting an English manor house. Why? Well, I am writing a ghost story myself right now and can see that being dead could be quite amusing. Not that I'm not enjoying life; I'm having a lovely time, thank you, but there might be compensations.
Nancy Farmer: You mean I'm not a character in a fantasy novel?
Sherwood Smith: No use in explaining who, since it is not published yet, but the reason why would be the sweet seduction of competence, of course.
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