Author This or That: Kristina McBride (One Moment)

Today I welcome Kristina McBride to My Reading Room.  She's here to answer This or That.  Welcome Kristina!

Breakfast or Brunch? Breakfast
Sedan or Sports Car? With 2 kids? Definitely a sedan.
Laptop or Ipad? Laptop – specifically my MacBook Air.
High Heels or Flip Flops? Flip Flops!
Trip around the world or trip to the moon? To the moon, please.
M&Ms: Peanut or Plain? Plain! Peanuts and chocolate? Not a good match. (I know a majority of the world would disagree with that statement, but I’m not afraid to go against the flow.)
Hair: Short or Long? Long.
Necklace or Bracelet? Neither.
Take a walk or go to the gym? Depends on if it’s raining. I’d prefer to go for a hike in the woods, but I’m always up for the gym.
Out to Eat or Take Out? Eat in.
Sunrise or Sunset? Either.
Math or English? Ha! English. Without a doubt. (I still remember walking – or should I say skipping – away from my last math class in college. Oh, happy day!)
Dogs or Cats? Dogs. I have a cat allergy :/
Spring or Fall? I can’t answer that. If I say spring, I’ll feel like I’m cheating on fall. If I say fall, I’ll feel like I’m cheating on Spring. And what about summer? Totally left out! There’s winter, too, ya know?

Author This or That: Kimberly Pauley (Cat Girl's Day Off)

This or That with author Kimberly Pauley

Breakfast or Brunch?

Brunch! I am SO not a morning person.

Sunrise or Sunset?

Sunset. Same reason as above, though sunrise is beautiful.

Math or English?

ENGLISH

Dogs or Cats?

CATS!!

Sedan or Sports Car?

Definitely sports car. I used to have a two seater hardtop convertible. *sigh* But now that we live in London, I don’t have a car at all anymore.

Laptop or Ipad?

Er…depends on what for. For most things, I’d say the laptop. But for reading books or, um, Angry Birds…iPad.

High Heels or Flip Flops?

Flip flops are SO far ahead of high heels for me it isn’t funny.

Trip around the world or trip to the moon?

World. Right now, anyway. There’s nowhere to go on the moon yet…

M&Ms:

Peanut or Plain? Peanut

Hair: 

Short or Long? Long (I used to have really really long hair. Now it’s medium-ish)

Necklace or Bracelet?

Necklace

Take a walk or go to the gym?

Take a walk. Love walking.

Write at home or write somewhere else?

Er…somewhere else, mostly. I, um, write best if I go to a café with no Wi-Fi…and hey, they have good coffee here in London.

Spring or Fall?

Oh! I don’t think I can answer this one. I love both! Maybe Fall just because it’s the gateway to the holidays. But then it’s also the gateway to the really cold grey months so I dunno.

About Cat Girl's Day Off:

Natalie Ng’s little sister is a super-genius with a chameleon-like ability to disappear. Her older sister has three Class A Talents, including being a human lie detector. Her mom has laser vision and has one of the highest IQs ever. Her dad’s Talent is so complex even the Bureau of Extra-Sensory Regulation and Management (BERM) hardly knows what to classify him as.

And Nat? She can talk to cats.

The whole talking-to-cats thing is something she tries very hard to hide, except with her best friends Oscar (a celebrity-addicted gossip hound) and Melly (a wannabe actress). When Oscar shows her a viral Internet video featuring a famous blogger being attacked by her own cat, Nat realizes what’s really going on…and it’s not funny.

(okay, yeah, a frou-frou blogger being taken down by a really angry cat named Tiddlywinks, who also happens to be dyed pink? Pretty hilarious.)

Nat and her friends are catapulted right into the middle of a celebrity kidnapping mystery that takes them through Ferris Bueller’s Chicago and on and off movie sets. Can she keep her reputation intact? Can she keep Oscar and Melly focused long enough to save the day? And, most importantly, can she keep from embarrassing herself in front of Ian?

Find out what happens when the kitty litter hits the fan.

Author This or That: Catherine Ryan Hyde (Second Hand Heart)

Breakfast or Brunch?

Breakfast. I’m already way too caught up in my writing by brunch time. Why lounge the morning away when I can finish off a chapter?

Lemonade or Pink Lemonade?

Hmm. Have to say probably neither. I’ll have to be dreadfully boring and say iced tea.

Sedan or Sports Car?

Here comes the dichotomy in me. I’m going to say sports car. But I own a sedan. My spirit is in the sports car category (and I would still have that wonderful little Triumph Spitfire if it had been a bit more reliable) but in the real world, it’s nice to be able to seat passengers comfortably in the back. Oh, well.

Laptop or Ipad?

Laptop. That gives me as much mobility as I need. Unless I’m actually traveling. These days I try to do most of my traveling in the form of great motorhome trips to amazing national parks. In which case I can bring my laptop. If I have to travel by plane (ugh, ugh, hate…ugh), my smartphone fills the gap. Despite the fact that my smartphone and I have issues (I publicly question its intelligence and threaten to have its IQ tested). 

High Heels or Flip Flops?

Hiking boots.

Trip around the world or trip to the moon?

Around the world. It’s such a beautiful world. Planet earth is so amazing, and I really want to see more of it. I want to hike through Nepal to a great view of Everest and/or Annapurna. I want to walk on the Great Wall. I want to go to Iceland and meet a puffin. And stay in that hotel in Norway that’s made up of individual glass rooms, so you can lie in bed and watch the Aurora Borealis. I’m really quite taken with this world. And though it would be amazing to see it from space, the moon seems a bit dry and dusty in comparison.

M&Ms: Peanut or Plain?

In reality, sugar makes me too weird. In theory, and historically, definitely peanut.

Hair: Short or Long?

Another of my dichotomies. Right now it’s long. But I choose short. It was having issues. When I can, I may go back to short. But I’m torn. Short is easy-care because you can wash and dry it so fast. But with long, I don’t have to drive 1 ½ hours round trip to my hair professional every six weeks. It’s a conundrum (but I’ll survive).

Necklace or Bracelet?

Why not both?

Take a walk or go to the gym?

Definitely take a walk! I went through this period of being a gym rat, a bunch of years ago. Like, 2 ½ hours a day. Then I burned out. And I don’t mean that in a vague, figurative sense. I mean an actual, literal burnout. Now I absolutely cannot tolerate walking on a treadmill and not having any scenery go by, pedaling a bike that never moves, or sweating on a stair climber and never getting any higher. I need results. So I take some very long walks, with some very high climbs involved. 

Write at home or write somewhere else?

I’ll write elsewhere if I need to. I’ll write anywhere if I need to. But home is best. Home is my first choice.

Spring or Fall?

Both are wonderful. But I give a slight edge to Fall, especially if I’m in a place where the leaves turn. I was just in the Pike’s Peak area, hiking on the mountain, and the quaking Aspen leaves are really amazing in yellow. Fall is good.

Second Hand Heart by Catherine Hand Heart

Vida is 19 and has never had much of a life. Struggling along with a life-threatening heart condition, her whole life has been one long preparation for death. But suddenly she is presented with a donor heart, and just in time. Now she gets to do something she never imagined she'd have to do: live.

Richard is a 36-year-old man who’s just lost his beloved wife, Lorrie, in a car accident. Still in shock and not even having begun the process of grieving, he is invited to the hospital to meet the young woman who received his wife’s donor heart.

Vida takes one look at Richard and feels she’s loved him all her life. And tells him so. Richard assumes she’s just a foolish young girl. And maybe she is. Or maybe there’s truth behind the theory of cellular memory, and maybe it really is possible for a heart to remember, at least for a time, on its own.

Second Hand Heart is both a story of having to learn to live for the first time, and having to learn to live all over again.