I'd like to welcome author Andrea Janes to my website. Her novel GLAMOUR is a fun, witty YA novel about witches in contemporary New England. I absolutely LOVED it. Her narrative voice is captivating, charming, and bewitching.
Name three items on your bucket list. Well, I’ve always wanted to see Macon, Georgia. (That’s a Simpsons quote, sorry. I’ll try to be serious.) Okay, one: take ghost tours in Edinburgh and New Orleans. Two: brew my own beer. Three: Maybe actually learn to sail! That’s about all I could accomplish without a time machine.
Secret (or not so secret) celebrity crush? Jon Snow from Game of Thrones and John Snow the 19th century epidemiologist who established that cholera was a waterborne, not airborne, illness.
What song or musical piece represents the soundtrack of your life at the moment? My husband and I have been listening to the new Eric Church album a lot recently.
Do you have any secret or quirky talents? I’m weirdly good at remembering dates. Like, if you tell me your birthday now I will remember it forever. Comes in really handy as a tour guide, let me tell you.
If you could have one superhero power, what would it be and why? Time travel, if that’s a superhero power.
Since you live in New York City and probably don’t have a basement or crawl space, what’s lurking in your closet or kitchen cabinet? Actually, the apartment we just moved from really did have a crawl space and I once wrote a short story about using it as an oubliette. I won’t tell you whom I wrote into the oubliette because for legal purposes I probably shouldn’t put that in writing. We have a storage unit in our basement now and the previous owner of the apartment sort of rigged up an old door into the rafters and it looks like that door is about to fall down any minute. It’s the kind with a frosted glass window in it and it always makes me think of the bathroom door in M.R. James’ Lost Hearts. Also in the basement is a warning sign forbidding us to allow feral cats into the building. They are apparently quite violent.
Favorite New England novel? Does Moby Dick count as a New England novel even though it starts in New York and finishes at sea? I mean, there is that lengthy stay at New Bedford’s Spouter Inn…. Well, if that doesn’t count then The Witch of Blackbird Pond, even though it’s a little heavy on the details of the Connecticut Charter.
If you were a witch like Christina, what spell would you cast first? Oh god, my first spells would be ALL cosmetic at this point in my life. I would cast a spell that would make me like I did ten years ago and I don’t even care how anti-feminist that sounds, I want to look twenty-five again! As the saying goes, I will do everything in my power to age beautifully except eat right, exercise, or stop drinking.
Have you ever fallen in love with a fictional character(s), and if so, who and from what novel/show/movie? Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock, like everyone else! Also: Bill Haverchuck from Freaks and Geeks. Oh, and Egon Spengler from Ghostbusters.
And since you give haunted walking tours in NYC, is there anything or anyplace that haunts you? I tend to have nightmares after giving tours of #14 West 10th Street. I dream that a man is standing in the front, west-side window either staring at me or waving at me. I’m not sure I believe all the stories about this place, but there’s a bad feeling about the house I can’t put my finger on. You can read more about it here:
http://boroughsofthedead.com/homepage/haunted-places-in-new-york-city/
Thank you, Andrea for a delightful interview! Visit http://worldweaverpress.com/2014/03/18/out-now-new-release-glamour/ for a synopsis of Glamour and list of retailers for eBook and trade paperback editions.
Andrea Janes writes horror, dark comedy, thrillers, and historical slapstick. She is the author of Boroughs of the Dead: New York City Ghost Stories. She is also a licensed NYC tour guide, and offers a variety of ghostly tours around the city. Her many obsessions include New York City history, old photographs, Mabel Normand, all things nautical, and beer. She maintains a personal blog over at Spinster Aunt, where she discusses these obsessions in more detail than is probably healthy.