Over the coming weeks I’d like to share interviews that I (and Magnus) conducted with the contributors to Corvidae and Scarecrow. This week we’ll talk with Holly Schofield. I met Holly when we were on a panel together at When Words Collide, and I’ve shared a table of contents with her in Tesseracts 17 but this was the first time I got to work with her directly 🙂
Interview with Holly Schofield
Please share a short excerpt from your story:
I pictured the scene as a crow might see it: the scarecrow high-stepping under the moon, tails flapping, twisting like the hepcat he would become. NBC’s Palmolive Hour alive with sweet jazz, the hopeful scent of ripening tomatoes, and the moonlight playing among the carrot fronds. The scarecrow tap dancing madly to “California, Here I Come” as it blared out the window of the farmhouse he was never, ever invited into.
What is it about scarecrows that inspired you to write about them? Scarecrows held no appeal for me at all, the dusty, frumpy old things. That is, until I read Rhonda’s suggestion of a _steampunk_ scarecrow. Then I was off and running, like a mouse across a cornfield.
As you may know, one of Edmonton’s local Twitter personalities is Magnus E. Magpie who haunts Twitter as @YEGMagpie. I invited him to read an advance copy of Corvidae and Scarecrow and offer a short cawmentary on each story from a magpie’s point of view, which he did. When he was finished I asked if there was anything he’d like to ask the contributors. The italicized portions are mine because Magnus didn’t ask straight-forward questions on account of he’s a magpie 🙂
Mr. Yegpie: It would be cool to know where all these stories came from, I mean geographically – like I think I could tell who was from Edmonton and who was from Vancouver! (Where do you live, and did that affect your story/poem at all?) I come from a province filled with thousand-acre farms and not a scarecrow to be seen.
Mr. Yegpie: I also would sure love to know where they got their ideas from! I caught several familiar references from existing books and mythology and fairy tales; I like seeing people riff off stuff. (What inspired your story/poem?) I had read Rhonda’s blog suggesting steampunk scarecrows immediately after I had randomly read about dance marathons during the Depression. The two ideas synched together like dance partners fox-trotting across the floor.
Holly Schofield’s work has appeared in many publications including Lightspeed, Crossed Genres, and Tesseracts. For more of her work, see http://hollyschofield.wordpress.com/
Amazon: (CA) (UK) (US)
Kobo: (CA) (US)
Direct From the Publisher: World Weaver Press
