SM: What made you decide to become a writer?

Cally: I can't really pinpoint a defining moment when I decided to be a writer but, as a small child, I read prolifically and loved getting lost in books. Enid Blyton was probably my favourite author when I was very little and she inspired me to start writing myself. When I was eight years old I heard about a British girl (aged 10) who had written a series of books about fruit and vegetable characters and been published. Apparently she was the youngest ever author ever to be published. At just eight I wanted to break that record (yes, I was that precocious) so wrote a series of books (and illustrated them) and sent them off to Penguin publishers. I received a rejection (of course) but it was probably the nicest, most helpful, rejection letter I've ever received. From then on I was determined that I would get published - no matter how long it took me.

Shelly: When just knee-high to a grasshopper, I developed the urge to write because I found it was the only way to rule my own universe. Kids in the sandbox can be very cruel to a bookworm.

John: A high school English teacher required my class to memorize a large section of Beowolf. I couldn't do it. I think writing has been a kind of penance ever since.

Robert: When I was ten, my mother showed me a booklet of handwritten stories my
father had written for her. It was obvious that she was turned on by it so I immediately started writing stories too. Although my mother was demonstrably pleased by the gift, a year later, of my own collected works, I failed to reap the same rewards that my father enjoyed. To this day, however, I continue to begin each story with the hope that this will be the one that gets me laid.

Steven: you'd have to rephrase the question without the word "decision" and then I still couldn't answer it.

SM: What/who is your biggest influence outside the literary world?

Steven: Toss up – Heraclitus and Andy Kaufman

Shelly: SCIENCE rocks! Not of the Thomas Dolby musical variety, but the full-blown investigative, peer-reviewed, hypothesis-testing sort. I'm quite positive that discovery is the substance of living. *

Robert: My friend, Javier, whose wisdom has consistently informed and enlightened me. It was Javier who imparted to me once that if a relationship survives the first fart there's a better than even chance it'll last for awhile. He also told me, to my everlasting gratitude, that corporate sexual harassment seminars were a great place to meet and hit on chicks.

Cally: Music. I've always loved music and it constantly astounds me how easily music can stir up your emotions. It can make you cry, make you angry, calm you, energize you, stir you. When I listen to a song that touches me, or changes me in some way, it makes me want to be a better writer. I want to write stories that elicit an emotional reaction in the reader, that resonates and stays with them. I'm not there yet, but that's my motivation.

John: The five bucks you gave me aren't bad. It'll cover a beer...maybe a used copy of Beowolf.

SM: If an illness or disorder were named after for you, what would it be called? What are its symptoms?

Cally: Procrastinus telephobia. It would be an illness that drives the sufferer to do pointless household chores and watch drivel on TV rather than do something important, whilst s/he steadfastly ignores the telephone because s/he doesn't want their chores/drivel watching to be interrupted.

Shelly: Rich Rigor-morties, recently dubbed Restless Leg Syndrome (RLS) by the pharmaceutical companies who decided it was an official condition (since they developed a drug for it). I used to call the affliction "leg crawlies," and I've been suffering for years. Symptoms include feeling as though both bb pellets and ants are running through the veins; it first causes cramping and stiffening of the calf and thigh muscles, leading into involuntary leg-jerking and foot-pedaling. At night, one can cause serious damage to his or her bedmate, and therefore can be horribly debilitating to relationships.

John: The John syndrome. You'd be found wandering aimlessly in my shoes.

Robert: Call it, and its principle symptom, the "jitters." I mean if you're asking me why I'm so jittery all time, I'll tell you. It's the egregious flaws in nature's design of the female body. A freshman at Pratt, for Christ's sake, would have known better than to locate the portal to the world in such close proximity to the anus. On the order of something my plumber might try to get away with, this demoralizing arrangement has made the moment of one's birth tantamount to exiting a subway station in downtown Jersey City. Yes, there may have been some practical justification for joining the genitalia and the birth canal - although I find it interesting that even the manufacturers of coke machines, and in a time of budget constraints, have managed to maintain a respectful distance between the coin slot and the delivery bin. But at the very least, these organs should have been positioned where the former would be quickly accessible, where the necessity to get undressed would have been eliminated. (Had I been consulted, the spot I'd have chosen is the side of the neck, just above the clavicle.)

Steven: Eruditia felicellia. The afflicted sits in a catatonic state (always in a well lit room), incessantly moistening his fingertips, mumbling under his breath, all the while digesting unfortified pabulum (re: order of succession of Quattrocento Doges, finer points of quantum chromodynamics, Deleuzian rhizomes, etc., etc.), which he will then extrude out into rarefied (toxic) waste products - this condition is often accompanied by pale skin, malnourishment, penury and social maladroitism (luckily, the afflicted rarely finds himself in social situations, save for at a bus stop, grocery store, post office, etc. and even then he will find himself freezing into the familiar posture, reading street signs, soup ingredients, postal proscriptions, etc. in a desperate attempt to learn something that might clue him in as to why the fuck he's here)

SM: What story or novel do you wish you'd written? Why?

John: The Bible. It's still going strong.

Robert: I wish I'd written the Bible, too, because there's absolutely no question that I'd have gotten laid if I'd done that.

Cally: The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. I love her books, her wit, her style and I love the fact that she is a female contemporary writer whose books are admired, studied and treated as literary gems (particularly that one). Also, I've always enjoyed books set in possible future worlds (e.g. Brave New World and 1984) and to read a book with a female MC and that explores feminist issues without being preachy or didactic was an absolute pleasure.

Steven: Beckett's The Unnameable -- so I could be confident that I had nothing left to say.

Shelly: Ooh, I wish I'd written The Grapes of Wrath, because I like Okies, wine, and the ability to make one laugh and cry and hope simultaneously. Two thumbs up, Dick.

SM: If you could say anything to the entire world, what would it be?

Cally: Stop bloody fighting, please.

Robert: I would say to the peoples of the world: Must every damn one of you decide to show up when I'm in a supermarket aisle and reaching for something on a lower shelf?

Shelly: Make things up and mix them with truth to spice up life on a daily basis. Find the grains of fiction in your reality, the seeds of reality in make-believe, and eat it all up.

Steven: Which one of you asswipes stole the vehicle sticker from my license plate?

John: How long have you been here, exactly?

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* Findings to be published in as-of-yet unnamed journal.