Karen Brichoux

The daughter of American missionaries, I was born in the central Philippines. Most of my childhood was spent reading or forcing the long-suffering family pets to act out the plots of books I'd recently read. At one point, my parents worried that I might be living too deeply in the world of my imagination. It turns out they were right.

When I came back to the US for college, I did the typical amount of floundering about, trying to determine what subjects might interest me for a lifetime. Everything interested me, and I could never answer the question “What do you want to be?” without a measure of sarcasm over the idea that “being” something was somehow equated with “doing” something. Still, guidance tests had revealed a natural predilection for verbal and mechanical skills, which had caused my high school counselor to suggest English literature or, if that didn’t interest me, perhaps becoming a car mechanic. Oddly, no one suggested mechanical engineering, probably because I had managed to fail Algebra I the first time I took it.

After stints as a secondary education major, a theater major, and a humanities major, I ended up getting a degree in English literature with a minor in European art history. Graduation didn’t help my confusion, and I went on to graduate school for my MA in European history, where I focused on the social/political/religious history of twelfth- and thirteenth-century France.

While working toward a PhD in European history, which had now morphed into nineteenth-century social/political history combined with political, labor, and feminist theory, I began the painful process of re-examining what I thought I was doing as opposed to what I actually was doing. I had been writing stories all my life, but every high school and college writer is told that no one, no one you understand, ever becomes a published author, despite evidence to the contrary in all bookstores. During this painful process of re-examination, I decided that evidence was better than hearsay, so I wrote my first book and naively assumed that awards and editor requests meant I was going to be published by tomorrow or, at worst, the day after. I left graduate school and began writing full time, thanks to the incredible support of my spouse, who never stopped believing in me even when it became obvious I was not going to be a published author tomorrow or even next week. Two years, four manuscripts, and 174 rejections later, I caught the interest of an agent who caught the interest of a publisher, and the rest is, as they say, history.

Writing is, in many ways, a reversion to childhood. I still spend most of my time reading and living in the world of my imagination, but the furry house mammals are happy to report that I no longer enlist their services in acting out plots.

Last Orders and The Sweet-Shop Owner by Graham Swift

Regeneration and The Eye in the Door by Pat Barker

American Gods by Neil Gaiman

Zodiac by Neal Stephenson

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke

Cypress Grove by James Sallis

Dream Days and The Golden Age by Kenneth Grahame

Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome

Clay's Quilt by Silas House

Ship of Fools by Richard Paul Russo

Ernie's Ark by Monica Wood

Black Sun Rising by C.S. Friedman

Danny, Champion of the World by Roald Dahl

Coming Up For Air by George Orwell

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling

The Hill of the Red Fox by Alan Campbell McLean

Jake by Alfred Slote

The White Tribunal by Paula Volsky

Cider With Rosie by Laurie Lee

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

The Aubrey/Maturin series by Patrick O'Brian

The Smiley series by John Le Carré

Led Zeppelin
Queen
Dire Straits
Rory Gallagher
Pink Floyd
Alan Parsons Project
Deep Purple
Dandy Warhols
Massive Attack
Clannad

Two Hands
The Painted Veil
The Fall
A Better Tomorrow
Heartlands
Levity
Down in the Valley
What's Eating Gilbert Grape?
Bullitt
Snatch
Birth
Shaun of the Dead
Withnail and I
Dead Man
Moulin Rouge
Fearless Hyena
Serpent's Kiss
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
The Princess and the Warrior
City on Fire
Happy Together
The Adventures of Sebastian Cole
The Badge
That's the Way I Like It
Hidden Fortress
Sanjuro
Igby Goes Down
Ninth Gate