friday fun five

Friday Fun Five

Happy Friday! This week’s guest is Rose Archer. Thanks, Rose.

To know more about Rose Archer, find her buried in emails and books, busy writing tantalizing blurbs as Dreamspinner Press’ Blurb Coordinator.

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1) What everyday household chore do you get the most satisfaction from doing?

I like working outside–mowing the grass and doing yard work. I get tan in like five minutes so I can see the difference when I’m done.

2) Stay up all night to finish a Netflix binge or an entire book?

I’ve done both at various times. It depends on my mood and what I’m watching or reading and how much it holds my attention.

3) Shoes: Buy for comfort or buy for cuteness?

Flip-flops to wear from the car to the beach, Chuck Taylors for everything else.

4) What is your favorite word?

Cat 🙂

5) Which US National Landmark resonates with you most? (Monument, nature, building…)

Beaches. I love the sea and get a little depressed if I have to be away from it for too long.


Rose came to Dreamspinner with creativity quite literally seeping out of10603737_828157147223931_9051938848771379356_n her pores. Editing, painting, speculative writing… she loves it all, as evidenced by her MFAs in English and Painting. Even her hobbies are creative: cosplay, anime, collecting ball-joint dolls, and admiring the graphic arts in video games. She likes to travel with her husband and daughter and spends all her extra money on it, and she keeps house for two cats in the northeastern US.

friday fun five

Friday Fun Five

Happy Friday! This week’s guest is Skylar M Cates. Thanks, Skylar.

To know more about Skylar M Cates, find her on Facebook and Twitter. Her latest literary triumph is A Guy’s Thanksgiving, available here.

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1) Do you make sure to follow any superstitious practices about anything–just in case?

Just telling my family I love them before we part for the day.

2) Hot mulled cider or cold hard cider?

Hot mulled cider (even though I live in Florida, drinking the hot stuff lets me imagine some cold weather).

3) Tons of fluffy pillows or one flat pillow only?

Fluffy (although my dog might steal them!).

4) What is your favorite word?

This one is too hard for me to select. I used to like decadent and loquacious for their sound. For meaning? Love!

5) If you could live for one day as a famous person from the past, who would you be?

Walt Whitman


Skylar M. Cates loves a good romance. She is quite happy to drink some coffee, curl up with a good book, and not move all day. Most days, however, Skylar is chasing after her husband, her kids, and her giant dog, Wasabi. skylarSkylar dreams about spending her days writing her novels, walking along the beach, and making more time for her good friends. On a shoestring budget, Skylar traveled all over in her early years. Although, lately, the laundry room is the farthest place she has visited, Skylar still loves to chat with people from all around the globe.

friday fun five

Friday Fun Five

Happy Friday! In the spirit and celebration of Halloween, this week is a special Spooky edition of Friday Fun Five.

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Five writers each answer these two Spooky questions:

1) What was your best/favorite Halloween costume as a kid?
2) What is your favorite spooky word?


Lyla Bellatas

1) My favorite costume was this ballet outfit I had. Light blue satin. I still remember it. Tulle, short skirt. Loved it. I usually like witchy outfits but this year my husband and I are going to be painted Day of the Dead.
2) Witch. Magick Spell.

Elle Brownlee

1) One year the weather was awful: cold with sleet and whipping wind. Instead of wearing our long-planned costumes, I put on my snowsuit, added a black trashbag like a poncho over the top, and donned the ballcap we bought for my dad as a gag gift–a moose head and antlers. My sister got into a huge plaid coat, a hat with earflaps, and carried a stick. We were the Moose and Hunter! We ended up having the best time; people loved the weather-savvy costumes, and since not many other trick-or-treaters braved the weather, so we scored a ton of candy too.
2) Preternatural. Wraith. Macabre.

Alyssa Cole

1) My fave costume was my kindergarten mermaid costume that my mom sewed herself and which made me feel like a *real* mermaid. Except for the not knowing how to swim part.
2) My fave spooky word: tintinabulation. Not spooky in itself, but it’s always had a sinister bent to me after reading it in a work by Edgar Allen Poe.

Poppy Dennison

1) Strawberry Shortcake (wouldn’t you know! *g*).
2) Ghastly.

Kate McMurray

1) When I was 12 or 13, I went as a cow with a halo, or a holy cow. I made the costume myself; I was pretty proud of that.
2) Creepy was the first thing that came to mine, but eerie and spine-tingling are good ones, too.

happyhalloween

friday fun five

Friday Fun Five

Happy Friday! This week’s guest is DeAnna C Zankich. Thanks, DeAnna.

To know more about DeAnna C Zankich, follow her blog or see what she’s up to on Pinterest and Facebook. Her most recent literary triumph is Honey in the Rock, the first in her Arabesque series, available here.

Arabesque

1) Is there a song you will always rewind to hear again once it’s played?

I’m a child of the ‘70’s and one song that reminds of happy times as a kid is “Follow You Follow Me” by Genesis. It would be worn out on my iPod if it were possible to do that. And lately, I’ve been obsessing over the theme song for the Starz series ‘Outlander’. The composer, Bear McCreary, rearranged a Celtic folk song into something purely magical. It evokes not only Scotland (which has always called my soul and person), but also the deep wanderlust at the core of all explorers. I play that song to death.

2) Live for a year in the Elizabethan Age or the Gilded Age?

Definitely Elizabethan. The history of the time was exhilarating and I just know I would rock those dresses.

3) Soup or sandwich?

Soup that eats like a sandwich.

4) What is your favorite word?

Detritus. Come on, it’s a great word.

5) Which Greek God fascinates you the most?

Demeter. I’ve played with her traditional description as the goddess of the harvest in my book series. Where the original intent of her worship was about agriculture, I tweak that meaning into referencing the harvest of one’s personal growth.  There’s a secret sexual society in my story who are on a mutual path of self-discovery; they use Demeter as their emblem.


DeAnna wrote her first story when she was nine about an evil stray cat who liked to shred laundry.deanna zankich From there, she experimented with acting, singing, journalism and modern dance, but always came back to her first passion–writing. She’s written three novels but the first one will likely be the last published. She’s a TV nerd and a reluctant, fidgety reader, but once a book hooks her, she plows through ravenously. Her literary heroes are Fitzgerald, Hemingway, McInerney, Tartt and King — she loves ghost stories but fears the dark. DeAnna is a long time resident of West Hollywood, California who really wishes she had freckles. She has a BA in Creative Writing/Novel from CSU Long Beach, and studied writing at Cambridge University in the UK. That’s probably where she became such an incurable Anglophile. Arabesque and its cast chose her as their storyteller almost fifteen years ago and the project has been a labor of love ever since.

friday fun five

Friday Fun Five

Happy Friday! This week’s guest is Anne Regan. Thanks, Anne.

Anne Regan is Executive Editor at Dreamspinner Press and manages the Harmony Ink Press teen LGBTQ+ fiction imprint. Her duties include submission review, editing, social media (Facebook! Twitter! Tumblr! Oh my!), and whatever else Elizabeth tells her to do. You can find her on Facebook both on her own and at the Harmony Ink page.

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1) Is there anything you thought you’d never dream of doing, but then have?

Leaving my evil day job at the beginning of this year to work full-time at Dreamspinner. It had been in the plans for at least the past three years and didn’t happen for various reasons, but at the end of January I finally pulled the plug. It didn’t help that my husband was unexpectedly downsized from his job a few months later and we went from three salaries to one, but he’s back working now, and it’s wonderful being able to focus all my energy on something I love.

2) Which store shopping spree would you rather have: arts & crafts or home & building supply?

The local Home Depot store is exactly 1.4 miles from my house. I know this because my husband shops there at least twice a week. When he was job hunting. I told him he should apply there since he has every aisle in the place memorized. We bought our home almost new when we moved to Texas, but that was 20+ years ago and like any aging property (myself included!) it has lots of little things that need repair. I also have a closet full of artsy-craftsy things I used to work on before Dreamspinner that I haven’t touched in years, so I’d definitely opt for the building supply spree. It’s good to keep my husband happy!

3) Sweet or salty snacks?

Can I cheat and say a little of both? I’m not much for purely sweet, but dark chocolate covered nut clusters? Nirvana.

4) What is your favorite word?

It may sound saccharine, but: love.  It makes everything better.

5) How would you spend an ideal rainy day?

In front of a warm fire with my six adopted sisters, reading, writing, and just being together. We usually plan an annual retreat every summer but it didn’t happen this year, and I missed it terribly. I’m looking forward to seeing most of them at the end of this month. There’s so much positive energy generated when we’re together that it fuels me for the rest of the year.


Anne Regan earned a BA in English and education before her student teaching convinced her she didn’t want a career Anne Selfie Respect 0315disciplining other people’s children. She’s spent the next thirtysome years in corporate America, moving between roles of increasing responsibility in IT project management, developing training curricula, and drafting user manuals. Anne has been part of Dreamspinner Press since its inception in 2006. She is currently Executive Editor of Harmony Ink Press, works with DSP Publications, and does anything else Elizabeth tells her needs done.