Interview Roulette: Dale Cameron Lowry

 

It’s Dale Cameron Lowry’s turn at the wheel today.

  1. What is your superpower? Your Kryptonite?

My superpower is being able to take any song and make it bawdy. My kryptonite is an interruption in my sleep schedule—that and colds. Both trigger migraines, so they’re almost literally kryptonite.

2. A tourist lands in your town. What should he or she see or do?

Oh gosh, I am the worst at this. In the summer, I’d probably suggest a farmers’ market. We claim to have the largest farmers’ market in the United States, held every Saturday morning around the state capitol, and it gets bigger each year. At this point, I tell guests if they want to go and actually be able to buy food, we need to get there before 8 a.m. or after 12 noon. Otherwise, it’s like trying to move through a DC Metro station at rush hour.

We also have lots of smaller farmers’ markets where the food is just as good and the crowds are not as crazy, so if your main goal is getting yummy produce or baked goods, go to one of those.

The Capitol building itself is pretty cool, but ever since 2011 it’s been tied in with a lot of negative emotional-political baggage, so I’m not as keen on visiting it as I used to be.

My in-laws always like to visit the student union, which has famous chairs.

Architecture buffs will want to visit anything designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in driving distance. Two popular sites are the First Unitarian Society meetinghouse and Taliesin.

But if it’s up to me, I’ll skip all that and take people birding or on a visit to Olbrich Botanical Gardens, where I used to be a volunteer pruner, or the International Crane Foundation headquarters (which isn’t in town, but is the only place in the world where you can see every living species of crane). If it’s summer, wrap it up with a visit to Michael’s Frozen Custard.

3. Where’s the weirdest place you’ve ever written?

I’m trying to remember if I’ve ever written on the toilet. … Probably. But I’m more likely to write while I’m in the shower. You know, be washing my hair, have an aha! moment, and have to turn off the water momentarily so I can make a note of whatever brilliant phrasing or plot contrivance just popped into my head.

I’ve also written in the car, while driving, by dictating into a handheld tape recorder. But that was when I was younger (obviously, if I was using a tape recorder) and had to drive a lot.

Talking about weird places to write reminds me of weird places to read. When the final Harry Potter book came out, I used to see this guy on the bike path holding the book with two hands and reading it with both eyes, all the while pedaling at 15 to 20 miles per hour. I really wanted to scream “Dumbledore dies!” at him, but I was worried about endangering everyone on the path even more than the present situation entailed.

4. Make up a new word you really wish would catch on. What is it and what does it mean?

When we were teenagers, I remember looking over my sister’s shoulder while she was writing in her notebook: “Am I clogged?”

I wondered what this new piece of slang meant. The only thing I could come up with was “drunk,” even though she obviously wasn’t.

She thought that was hilarious. “No, I was trying to figure out if the pen was clogged.” But ever since then, we have used the word “clogged” as a synonym for “drunk” or “loopy.”

We would feel totally cool if that caught on.

5. Pick a politician and give him or her one piece of really good advice.

Close your Twitter account.

 

Book blurb:

Myths, moons, and mayhem make the perfect threesome—and so do the men in this anthology.

Enjoy nine erotic stories of paranormal ménages a trois fueled by lust and magic, where mystical forces collide with the everyday world and even monsters have their own demons to conquer.

A werewolf gets a lust-fueled lesson on fitting in with the pack, a professor unlocks ancient secrets and two men’s hearts, and a pair of supernaturals find themselves at the erotic mercy of a remarkable human. Ghosts, fairies, aliens, and mere mortals test the boundaries of their desires, creating magic of their own.

Editor Dale Cameron Lowry brings you tales by favorite authors such as Rob Rosen and Clare London, as well as by newcomers to the genre. The paranormal lust and polymythic beings of Myths, Moons & Mayhem will spark your fantasies and fuel your bonfires.

 

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Author bio:

Dale Cameron Lowry’s number one goal in life is getting the cat to stop eating dish towels; number two is to write things that bring people joy. Dale is the author of Falling Hard: Stories of Men in Love and a contributor to more than a dozen anthologies.

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