Interview Roulette: L.J. LaBarthe

Happy Fourth! Today we’re joined by L.J. LaBarthe.

  1. What is your worst habit? Your best one? Procrastination. I think I’m a master at it. If I can put off something I don’t want to do, I’ll find a reason to make that happen. As for best… hm. I’ve been told I’m too generous sometimes, so maybe that?
  2. What is the strangest food you like to eat? I love snails. My father was a French chef (born and raised in Paris, trained in Bordeaux), so I grew up with a lot of French delicacies served as regular food. His snails with garlic butter were amazing, as were the crumbed frog’s legs he did. I also love artichokes, which he used to steam and then we’d dip the soft parts into a vinaigrette and eat them, working our way into the center of the artichoke. Yum.
  3. What is the dumbest thing one of your characters has ever done? Tried to fight a mutated monster without enough back up. It was a group of them fighting and there were a lot of monsters. I did toy with killing one of the characters in the process but decided maiming them was much more interesting.
  4. Write a story—no more than 100 words–based on this prompt: When the levee failed…. When the levee failed, he ran. He wasn’t sure that he could outrun the water, but he was determined to try. The sound of it following him was a roar—an insidious thing that grew in volume and ferocity, sounding like an eternally hungry beast. He fled as fast as his legs could carry him, his heart pounding in his chest and terror firing through every synapse in his brain. The water would keep coming, he knew; there was no escape, it told him as it followed him. It had destroyed everything in its path and he would be next.
  5. If your home lost electricity for one week, what would you do to survive? Go to a pet-friendly hotel with wi-fi.
  6. If you could be any other living person for a single day, who would you be? I don’t think I’d swap with anyone else, to be honest. I’m pretty okay with who and what I am, obstacles and issues included.
  7. If you had to live in a movie, TV show, or book, which would you choose and why? “Twin Peaks” and not just because I’m totally engrossed in the new season, but because I know my fictional life would be, as Agent Cooper said in the first two seasons, “both wondrous and strange.”
  8. If you had to spend a week snowed in at a mountain, which of your characters would send you screaming out into the blizzard before the week was up? Probably one of the Archdemons. They’d get really annoyed very quickly with human frailty and the fact I hate to be cold, I think.

Book blurb:

1131, The Silk Road.

Gallienus of Constantinople, a scarred soldier who used to work the city gates, enters a new phase of his life when he meets and falls in love with Misahuen of Gyeongju. But prejudice of same-sex relationships dominates Byzantine society, and both the Emperor and the Church denounce such love. Should Misahuen and Gallienus be discovered, the punishment is castration or death. Fearing he’ll lose Misahuen, Gallienus decides to go with Misahuen when he leaves the city forever.

A former farmer, Misahuen fled war-torn Korea and journeyed to Constantinople with a merchant caravan. He didn’t expect to take such an interest in a wounded soldier at journey’s end. But he understands the danger, so he and Gallienus join another caravan as guardsmen and begin a two-thousand-mile trip along the Silk Road. Now all they have to do is persevere to their final destination without the truth of their relationship being discovered and being killed because of it… or by the other dangers along the Road.

 

Book buy links:

https://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/books/city-of-jade-by-lj-labarthe-4350-b

http://a.co/2pc3xwM

https://www.bookdepository.com/City-of-Jade-L-J-Labarthe/9781623808488

 

Author bio:

J. LaBarthe is an Australian, a writer, a reader, a daydreamer, a cat wrangler, a carer, a researcher, a dreamer, a music lover, a film buff and a traveler. Sometimes, all at once! Author of paranormals, historicals and contemporaries. L.J. LaBarthe is a French-Australian woman, who was born during the Witching Hour, just after midnight. From this auspicious beginning, she went on to write a prize-winning short story about Humpty Dumpty wearing an Aussie hat complete with corks dangling from it when she was six years old. From there, she wrote for her high school yearbook, her university newspaper, and, from her early teens to her twenties, produced a fanzine about the local punk rock music scene. She loves music of all kinds and was once a classical pianist; she loves languages and speaks French and English and a teeny-tiny smattering of Mandarin Chinese, which she hopes to relearn properly very soon. She enjoys TV, film, travel, cooking, eating out, abandoned places, urbex, history, and researching. L.J. loves to read complicated plots and hopes to do complex plot lines justice in her own writing. She writes paranormal, historical, urban fantasy, and contemporary Australian stories, usually m/m romance and featuring m/m erotica. She has won a Rainbow Awards Honorable Mention and another award for Best Historical Gay Novel. L.J. lives in the city of Adelaide, and is owned by her cat.

Author contacts:

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