Conversation 22: Table Is Turned: You Interview February Grace

Hi all, welcome back to Clockwork Conversations!

I will be laid up for a little while recovering from a major surgery. So in the meantime, I thought it might be fun to let you turn the tables on me and ask me any non-writing related questions you may be curious about my answers to!

I took this notion to Twitter and as usual, my beloved Twitizens did not let me down. Thank you, my friends!

First, to keep to the standard format, here’s a short bio…

February Grace is a writer, poet, and artist from Southeastern Michigan. She has created characters with clockwork hearts, told the romantic tale of modern fairy godparents, and has now put her own spin on a classic tale in UPON A TIME, her fourth novel published by Booktrope. She sings on key, plays by ear, and is more than mildly obsessed with colors, music, and meteor showers.

Question 1 from @rosieclaverton: “What do you do to recharge?”

FG: Reading inspiring non-fiction really helps me a lot. Books on Keirsey Temperament Theory. Books by Disney Imagineers about creativity, all of that wonderful stuff. 

I recently read and loved The Art of Asking by Amanda Palmer—just brilliant. I’ve always had a soft spot for ‘living statues’ but I will never look at them the same again after reading her book.

Creative non-fiction inspires me to keep trying harder at the things I love most that are not exactly relaxing pastimes—specifically writing and painting. I find more peace in painting than in writing, but in both, there is a struggle to get out of my head what I see there and reproduce it correctly on the page or canvas. Always a struggle to get it as close to ‘right’ as I can. Some days you win, some days the canvas wins.

Listening to music is another refuge I don’t know what I would do without.

But the absolute BEST way for me to feel like a new woman? Take me to Disney World for four or five days. After going “home” for a visit, I always feel so much better.

Question 2: from @NineTiger: “What is your favorite spot in nature?”

FG: Among the flowers. I used to love the apple orchard behind my great-grandparents’ house, where I spent a lot of my life as a teen and then again in my twenties. In spring the trees were a glorious wash of pink and white- so beautiful. My great-grandmother’s rose bushes also bloomed long after her passing, tended by my grandmother, and I miss walking among them. 

The best feeling in the world is to go to the Flower and Garden Festival at EPCOT in Walt Disney World; where they bring in so many extra hundreds of thousands (literally) of blooms for the event. I am so sad I will have to miss it this spring; I can only hope I will be well enough to attend next year. It is pretty much one of the highlights of the entire year for me when I can make it down there to Florida for it.

Here’s a photo taken at last year’s Festival by my husband… truly glorious.

Question 3 from @ShellSly: “If you had to live in any historical period, which would you choose, and why?”

FG: Well I would love to live in Victorian times, but if I did I would have gone completely blind, and probably would have died at a very young age, so I guess it’s a good thing that I live in the era I do now! Though my doctors have said in the past that my body sets them back 100 years in what they can do to help me… 

Why the Victorian era? Simple… the clothes, the (perceived at least) gentility of the time… afternoon tea and gracious people. That may all be myth and legend though, so I suppose that I’d most like to live in the Victorian era as imagined by Disney LOL. There’s a theme to my life, it seems… all roads (and questions) lead back to Disney somehow.

Question 4 from @DabinReece: “You’ve described seeing music as patterns and colors. Can you put this into words for us? Use a song as an example?”

FG: Oh wow, this is difficult. The closest thing I can compare it to is the experience I had at a Coldplay concert during their Mylo Xyloto tour: they gave everyone wristbands that lit up in bright colors and were synchronized to the music.

When they first all lit up and the song “Mylo Xyloto” played, I cried; because it was like seeing in 'real life' for the first time what music, especially their music, looks like inside my own head.

It’s like the most beautiful neon rainbow you could ever imagine; a million twinkling fireflies in hyper vivid shades of blue, pink, purple, green…every color of the rainbow. 

It is so difficult to put into words, but if you’ve ever seen clips of Coldplay’s Mylo Xyloto tour, then that is the best way I can explain what it’s like. It’s like fireworks on steroids. There is nothing else in the world like the show my brain puts on for me when music hits just the right notes.

And finally, the question that everyone is asked here…

Question 5: Do you collect anything, and if so, why?

FG: I collect too many things LOL. Dollhouses and miniatures, because I love arranging perfect, beautiful little homes with imaginary families untouched by the sadness of the real world. 

A couple reunited, hugging at Christmastime, in front of one of my dollhouses. Oh, the stories I imagine...

I collect keepsakes from Walt Disney World vacations because as you’ve probably guessed it’s my favorite place in the world; and I collect items to do with Elsa from Frozen because I relate to her in so many ways, it’s difficult to explain it.

My favorite things of all to collect, though, are books, handwritten letters… and memories.

Thank you to everyone who was kind enough to ask me questions for this interview, it was so much fun! Please follow all the wonderful folks who provided today's questions on Twitter! You’ll be glad you did, they are made of awesome.

You can find out more about me, my books, and my artwork by visiting my home on the web at: www.februarywriter.blogspot.com

Or hunt me up on Twitter and say hello! @FebruaryGrace

See you all next time… as soon as I am better :)

xoxo

~bru

Blogger (and today’s guest) at Clockwork Conversations