Spies Don't Do Interviews

I received an email today-->

"Loved your book! By the way, are you anywhere near ***? I have a rental house there with a leak and thought you might take a look and repair it for me. Thanks!"

:-)
:-P
:-/

That's my reaction for now. LOL.

I do get my fair share of strange reader emails. There was one who read Facing Fear and admonished me for giving my Asian heroine long, long hair and a grandmother who was into telling fortune. That's so...racist, this reader complained, because it reinforced the image of Asian women having long hair and fortune-telling grandmas. She ended with a warning to me not to do this again or she wouldn't ever buy another one of my books.

I had the same reaction:

:-)
:-P
:-/

Then there was the reader who wanted exact instructions on how to wear the pearls in the now infamous pearl scene from Into Danger. Can I please tell her what kind of pearls? How big? How long? And...where the placement of each strand is?

:-)
:-P
:-/

But I do answer those emails that ask: "Are you really a spy?" with "If I tell you, I'll have to kill you." Bwahaha.

There was a hometown article about me recently (I'll put it on my link soon). The picture you see in my second post is the one from the paper; it shows me on a roof with a nailgun and laptop. Anyway, it's quite amazing how many people in that subdivision stop by the jobsite that I'm working on nowadays to talk to me. They've known me for years--I put the roofs on their houses. Through these years, they've walked their dogs past me; driven their cars past my truck; walked by me to their postbox while I was picking up roof trash; jogged or cycled past; mowed their lawns while I nailed next door...generally, I was just another construction worker. Now they call me by name and make conversation while I pick the trash.

The other day, a lady drove up to the house and in front of all the other workers on the site, asked me to autographed The Protector. Needless to say, everyone made fun of me because I was probably the only author who ever autographed her book while carrying a ladder on one shoulder ;-).

It doesn't bother me, of course. I'm flattered and astonished by the interest. I still don't know what to make of it when a stranger stops me while I'm xeroxing a galley at Office Depot and asks whether that's my next book. It's cool...and a bit disconcerting. I feel like I need to wear make up ;-) because I look like hell after a day on the roof and people know me now! Heh.

I'm also going to be interviewed by the Orlando Sentinel soon. Hey, ya never know, Mickey Mouse might stop to chat with me while I'm in Orlando next time! With my luck, he just wants me to check out his leaking roof....

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Addendum:

TIGER EYE by Marjorie Liu
I highly, highly recommend this book! I'm not done with it but I can't put it down! What a wonderful and fresh voice! I was wondering whether Miss Liu knows that HARIMAU is tiger in Malay, and maybe she was using that as a derivative for Hari's name.

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