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Friday Fun Five

Happy Friday! This week’s guest is K.A. Mitchell. Thanks, K.A.!

To know more about K.A. Mitchell, check out www.kamitchell.com, see what she’s up to on Twitter (@ka_mitchell), WordPress, or sign up for her newsletter. Her latest literary triumphs are Bad Influence and Bad Behavior and are available anywhere you want to buy books. If you want to know what happens when a dive vacation goes on a little too long, read No Souvenirs.

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1) When you’re flipping channels, what movie will you always stop on to watch?

I love old movies, and even if I’ve never seen that one, I can get sucked into a screwball comedy. But in terms of the modern stuff, I can never flip past The Mummy. “I…am…a librarian.”

2) Hamsters or chinchillas?

I’ve had them both. I still miss my chinchilla Joey terribly. He’s been gone 13 months. He was a sweetheart. He gave kisses and loved to be petted. He lifted his arms up for scratches. We shared lots of greens together, and I fed him roses from the garden too. He was here for over ten years.

However, the story of the hamster Killer-I-Bite is much more entertaining. He was once Speedy, a classroom hamster with a genial personality. Unbeknownst to the teacher (a.k.a. my wife) they decided to release some very serious fumes in carpet cleaning over one weekend. The chemicals wreaked a Mr. Hyde-like transformation in Speedy. He became vicious, attacking even his food when it was offered to him. We took him in, changing his name to Killer, which had the I Bite warning added as a sign on his cage that became part of his name. He was often seen hanging from the top of his cage bars by his hind feet and swinging, much like a bat. He lived out the rest of his typical hamster life span in solitude and earning deep respect. Feeding him was like throwing something to the velociraptors in the first Jurassic Park, cleaning his cage required a game warden’s assistance.

3) Sunny spring day or rainy fall day?

Rainy fall day, please. Love them. Give me a drive and rain and fall and some Chris Cornell coming out of my speakers, and I’m in heaven.

4) What is your favorite word?

Sesquipedalian. It’s so much fun to say. I like its literal meaning best (a foot and a half long) but it’s great at describing what it means, an overly long word. However, my critique group and editors might weigh in and say that I have a deep and abiding love affair with the word even.

5) You can travel anywhere in the world, but only stay two hours. What’s your destination?

Dive boat off Oahu or any Hawaiian island, I’m not picky. Can I start out already 50 feet under water? By the way, you know I can’t fly right away after I’ve been diving, right? I’m going to have to stay or risk decompression sickness. And you wouldn’t want that, right? Right, Elle?


K.A. Mitchell discovered the magic of writing at an early age when she learned that a carefullybadinfluence crayoned note of apology sent to the kitchen in a toy truck would earn her a reprieve from banishment to her room. Her career as a spin-control artist was cut short when her family moved to a two-story house, and her trucks would not roll safely down the stairs. Around the same time, she decided that Chip and Ken made a much cuter couple than Ken and Barbie and was perplexed when invitations to play Barbie dropped off. She never stopped making stuff up, though, and was surprised to find out that people would pay her to do it. Although the men in her stories usually carry more emotional baggage than even LAX can lose in a year, she guarantees they always find their sexy way to a happy ending.