READ TUESDAY. TWENTY QUESTIONS FOR...

Writers chatting to each other on writing. Tedious or devious? Let’s have twenty questions, and find out. I'm going to answer these questions on other blogs.
   This blog will host the answers of assorted scribblers, wordsmiths, and advocates of tale-tellery.
   As we're supporting reading, in addition to the READ TUESDAY sale, I'm sure that some authors won't be able to host a sale on the day. That's no reason to bar contributors.
   Here are the questions. Stay tuned for some answers.

1. Fire rages in your house. Everyone is safe, but you. You decide to smash through the window, shielding your face with a book. What is the book?

2. Asleep in your rebuilt house, you dream of meeting a dead author. But not in a creepy stalkerish way, so you shoo Mr Poe out of the kitchen. Instead, you sit down and have cake with which dead author?

3. Would you name six essential items for writers? If, you know, cornered and threatened with torture.

4. Who’d win in a fight between Count Dracula and Frankenstein’s monster? If, you know, you were writing that scene.

5. It’s the end of a long and tiring day. You are still writing a scene. Do you see it through to the end, even though matchsticks prop your eyelids open, or do you sleep on it and return, refreshed, to slay that literary dragon another day?

6. You must introduce a plot-twist. Evil twin or luggage mix-up?

7. Let’s say you write a bunch of books featuring an amazing recurring villain. At the end of your latest story you have definitely absitively posolutely killed off the villain for all time and then some. Did you pepper your narrative with clues hinting at the chance of a villainous return in the next book?

8. You are at sea in a lifeboat, with the barest chance of surviving the raging storm. There’s one opportunity to save a character, drifting by this scene. Do you save the idealistic hero or the tragic villain?

9. It’s time to kill a much-loved character – that pesky plot intrudes. Do you just type it up, heartlessly, or are there any strange rituals to be performed before the deed is done?

10. Embarrassing typo time. I’m always typing thongs instead of things. One day, that’ll land me in trouble. Care to share any wildly embarrassing typing anecdotes? If, you know, the wrong word suddenly made something so much funnier. (My last crime against typing lay in omitting the u from Superman.)

11. I’ve fallen out of my chair laughing at all sorts of thongs I’ve typed. Have you?

12. You take a classic literary work and update it by throwing in rocket ships. Dare you name that story? Pride and Prejudice on Mars. That kind of thing.

13. Seen the movie. Read the book. And your preference was for?

14. Occupational hazard of being a writer. Has a book ever fallen on your head? This may occasionally happen to non-writers, it must be said.

15. Did you ever read a series of books out of sequence?

16. You encounter a story just as you are writing the same type of tale. Do you abandon your work, or keep going with the other one to ensure there won’t be endless similarities?

17. Have you ever stumbled across a Much-Loved Children’s Classic™ that you’ve never heard of?

18. You build a secret passage into your story. Where?

19. Facing the prospect of writing erotica, you decide on a racy pen-name. And that would be…

20. On a train a fan praises your work, mistaking you for another author. What happens next?