The Mumpsimus does interviews

As if The Mumpsimus wasn't a great enough blog already, Matthew Cheney has started interviewing people. He talks with K.J. Bishop about her novel The Etched City, her story "Maldoror Abroad" in Album Zutique and her writing process.

I don't think I have an impulse to tell stories so much as an impulse to spend time with characters. I always used to imagine things about my favourite characters from movies and books, and over time those characters would change in my mind, turning into people who were similar to the originals but different enough for me to think of them as separate. When I started writing, I discovered that the process of writing allowed me to get to know them much better than I could by just daydreaming. I also discovered that I liked writing in and of itself -- the pleasure of making things out of words, of finding the way to express something, to define some notion or feeling of mine that previously had been vague.

Also, while I'm talking about interviews, Maud Newton's latest "Fiction Writers on Writing" (previously "Making Book") is with Stephen Elliott.