Kris Herndon is a prolific writer of both fiction and nonfiction. The real world isn't good enough for me, either, Kris, and I look forward to seeing your creations of a better one.

Tamago: How did you decide you wanted to become a writer?
Kris: Writing is almost like an involuntary thing for me. I think about it constantly. I think I decided to try and turn it into a paying career mostly to justify my existence on the planet. Also I'm super shy and when speaking, I tend to express myself poorly -- so maybe I've learned to compensate in writing, being that everyone needs to communicate. If I didn't write articles, short stories and novels I would probably send many more long tiresome emails to my friends and family and post many more long-winded posts on online message boards. And no one wants to see that happen.
Tamago: Do you see yourself as a novelist, a short story writer, or both?
Kris: At this point I've published only one short story, but I write both and my goal is to publish both.
Tamago: Which writers influence your work?
Kris: This is a hard question because I don't want to come across like I'm comparing my work to a bunch of unquestionably genius-level stuff! That said, I read in every genre. I admire Kazuo Ishiguro, J.M. Coetzee, P.G. Wodehouse, Douglas Adams, Ira Levin, Neal Stephenson. Some books that I re-read a lot are Watership Down, Mary Stewart's Merlin Trilogy, and Brideshead Revisited. I'll get laughed at for this one but I have a strange affection for Judith Krantz. I love Cindy Pon, Lisa Brackmann, and Gretchen McNeil, great writers and wonderful human beings -- I met them through Absolute Write and they are all brilliant and super supportive of beginning writers. And quite honestly, some of my VP classmates, and other writers I've met through VP influence me tremendously every day -- George Galuschak, Miranda Suri, Leonard Richardson, Ferrett Steinmetz, Christian Walter, EF Kelly, Sean Craven.
Tamago: How did you decide to write a story about wereflamingos?
Kris: There is a good story behind this one. During the VP trip to "The Bite" in Menemsha, I was sitting with Patrick and Teresa Nielsen-Hayden, eating fried shrimp. Teresa said, "Patrick always eats the tails" and I said, "To keep his plumage pink?" We riffed about it a little bit, and it was really funny. Later that night when I was struggling with about a hundred and one lame, lifeless first sentences for the homework assignment -- the prompt was something like "Flawed hero saves the day" -- the idea of a man with pink plumage eating tons of shrimp to maintain the rosy shade of his magnificent tail feathers gave rise to that rather silly story. It was very hard reading it aloud on the last day because I was dying of laughter through parts of it. Now that I see it in print there are million things I would change about it! It's like re-reading an email after you hit "send."
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Mirrored from Writer Tamago.