Fantastic Fives on Chris Howard

Five words and/or phrases that describe you:

Always writing
Daydreaming
Quiet
Creative
and finally,
someone who can't live too far from the ocean.
That's definitely everything about me in five words or phrases.

Five people and or things that inspire you:

1. My mother, who wrote and painted and filled our family with creativity, spontaneity, and instilled in us a boldness and eagerness to take the next step.

2. Art: any great story, painting, sculpture. I often get the I-should-be-writing urge halfway through reading a good book, and I either have to stop and write, or hold it off to finish reading. Sometimes it tough.

3. My own kids. Like any parent with teenage kids in today's world, you realize how different things are, how much more capable they are--in many ways--than we were growing up. I'm looking over at my teenage daughter...conference call going on the landline, texting on the cell, TV's on--one hand on the remote--and she's downloading music videos through TiVo, Stephenie Meyer's Breaking Dawn is open with at least one eye scanning the lines (easy, because she's already read it twice), earbuds in one end, jacked into an iPod on the other, and her other hand's on the keyboard keying in lyrics on her wiki page to a song she's writing with friends in the four open chat windows. Kids today...man, they're freakishly sharp and imaginative and seem to know more about the world than I did at their age.

4. The sea, the sound of the surf, the cry of gulls, the silence under the waves. Not sure I could live without that, not for long anyway. If I'm ever shipped off to another world, it needs to be an ocean world.

5. Last, I'd say myself. Art, and maybe any creative endeavor, has a reciprocal or circular inspirational effect on the creator. I re-read chapters when I write not just to get back into a particular storyline's groove, but also to feel good about writing and completing them, and I use that as fuel for more chapters. My painting works the same way.

Five of your favorite authors:
I have a lot more than five, but I can list five of them in no real order:
Neil Gaiman
Caitlín R. Kiernan
Lois McMaster
Bujold Richard
Morgan Dostoevsky

Describe five of your heroes/heroines through your eyes:
There are a couple ways to take this one, including real or imagined heroes who have had some influence on my life, or the heroes/heroines who appear as characters I've developed in my books and stories. I'm going with the latter:

Kassandra is--by far--my all time favorite character. She's fierce, thoughtful, not always sympathetic, has way too many problems for one person to deal with, but manages to get through every day with them--while fending off small armies of assassins and planning the downfall of her murdering grandfather.

Corina Lairsey - She's tough, witty, and having experienced more than a few bad relationships first hand, might just be equipped to handle something a little deeper and more controlling.

Michael Henderson - the observant outsider with a science background, a former science teacher, marine biologist, who welcomed the Seaborn curse, and now lives under the sea.

Kallixene - Kassandra's paternal grandmother has orchestrated the rise of an exiled Seaborn Great House, and had hand in Kassandra's development and rise to power.

Nicole Garcia - One of Kassandra's two sisters, the one with high grades, artistic ability, and political ambitions.

Five reasons to read your books:

If you like the sea,
strong characters,
interesting uses of magic,
battles at four hundred fathoms,
and last,
I think fantasy readers looking for something unique will find Seaborn

Cheers!

Chris

Website: http://www.saltwaterwitch.com/
Blog:http://the0phrastus.typepad.com/the0phrastus/
Art Portfolio: http://the0phrastus.typepad.com/photos/portfolio/index.html

Extra!Extra! Chris has offered to do a special giveaway:
It's all twos: The first two people to buy Seaborn from Amazon.com to give to their local library will each get a $20 Amazon gift card. Copy and paste your Amazon receipt for Seaborn (make sure you edit out any personal info) and email it to me at chrishoward.author@gmail.com, and I'll send you a gift card for $20. (It would also be great if you also read Seaborn and posted a review on Amazon before giving it away, but it's optional).
Another Extra Giveaway! Since Seaborn is a fantastic read, I have a copy to giveaway
to a lucky commenter.