Next stop on the Virtual Book Tour: Kanlaon

Once again I have been asked some wonderful and probing questions, this time by Kanlaon, aka author Marianne Villaneuva (whose wonderful short story collection, Mayor of the Roses, we reviewed on The Short Review - you have to visit her blog to find out where the blog name comes from) on the ninth stop on my Virtual Book Tour, which is slowly drawing to a close.

Here is a short excerpt from the interview:

What’s the worst thing about being a short story writer?

Having people ask me whether they are for children - and then they ask when I am going to write something proper (a novel). I hate that!

Your stories are filled with emblems. They lend your stories a surreal quality. When did you first start realizing the power of the image, and what kind of freedom does it give you, to write stories clustered around images?

To be honest, I hadn’t thought about this until you mentioned it. I don’t plot my stories, I hear a voice in my head, a first line, and I just follow it and see where it goes. I don’t sit and think, well, this is my central image and I will weave a story around this. If this has happened in several of the stories, it is entirely unconscious! That said, while I am writing I will sometimes see a powerful image emerging and that will end up driving the story, such as the cake in the shape of the Sun in Self Raising or the man braiding the woman’s hair in Plaits. But it is not a conscious process.

For the rest of the interview, click here. Also, take the time to read some of Marianne's other blog posts, she is a wonderful writer with a very interesting take on life, which is why her blog is anthropologist.wordpress.com!