Thumbnail Thursday with Anaea Lay

Welcome to another edition of Thumbnail Thursday! Today I'd like to welcome Anaea Lay, who is quite charming and pleasant, unless you're her enemy. Or a baby.

What are you working on right now?

Right now I'm revising a semi-post-apocalyptic urban fantasy examination of Romeo and Juliet where a modern plague has forced previously secret societies into the open.  It's full of all kinds of fun mayhem.

What's your pre-writing ritual?

I don't have much of a pre-writing ritual.  I write whenever I feel like it and have the time, so as long as I've got a computer with a keyboard, I dive right in and go.  Usually I've got some sort of music blaring, too. 

Tell me about your favorite story that you've published. What inspired it, and what does it mean to you?

My favorite story I've ever written, even, is one coming out from Nightmare later this year: They Called Him Monster.  The story mugged me while I was wandering around Parc Guëll in Barcelona.  I couldn't actually sit down to write it until several days later, and it was very cross with me about that.  But it came out beautifully and I've loved it unconditionally ever since.

You can have lunch with any writer, living or dead. Who would it be, and why?

Robert Heinlein.  I found him at just the right time, and read just about everything he wrote.  I'd really love the chance to talk to him about the post-internet world.  But I'd want a late-50's Heinlein, before Stranger In a Strange Land became a big thing.  I suspect he became less interesting later.

What's one of the best novels and/or short stories you've read recently?

I've been recommending N. K. Jemison's The Killing Moon to everybody everywhere.  I've been a big fan of hers since The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms and was really worried about a sophomore slump when she went to a new series.  Instead I wound up loving the new duology to bits.  She does character and world building fantastically, with a healthy topping of mood and luciously crafted prose, which is pretty much everything I ask for from my fiction.

Writing is a sedentary endeavor. What do you do to stay healthy and active?

I eat babies for their health benefits and spend evenings flogging my enemies in my basement.  It's great stress relief.

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Anaea Lay lives in Madison, Wisconsin where she sells Real Estate under a different name, writes, cooks, plays board games, spoils her cat, runs the Strange Horizons podcast, and plots to take over the world. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Apex, Penumbra, Lightspeed, Strange Horizons and Nightmare. She makes her internet home at anaealay.com where you can find her blogging about most anything.