Cybils Q&A with Laura Amy Schlitz.

Laura Amy Schlitz is the author of the awesomely-awesome A Drowned Maiden's Hair.  If you haven't read it yet, do!

From the Cybils interview:

Q. What were you like as a child? Did you immerse yourself in melodrama?

A. I suppose I've always had melodramatic leanings.  My parents were fond of telling me that I was not Sarah Bernhardt, which seems to indicate that I was a dramatic little girl.  I was a lucky child, because I had a lot of time to play—pretending games, not soccer.  I played with dolls and stuffed animals; I was a horse, a panther, a Civil War spy, a witch, a mermaid (if you drink water out of a seashell, it tastes like the ocean).  I spent a lot of time in the cellar, dressed in mildewy taffeta and old chiffon gowns.  I was a happy-go-lucky, curious, vainglorious child.  I haven’t changed much. 

About melodrama:  I’ve been surprised by how many people have thought that the subtitle of my book is somehow pejorative.  I love melodrama—I love it so much that I somehow missed the fact that it’s out of fashion.  When I wrote “A Melodrama”, I was using the term in its nineteenth-century, theatrical sense:  I was promising an old-fashioned moral conflict, a whiff of brimstone, a plot that alternates between sensationalism and comedy, and a happy ending.