A writer for more than 40 years, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro has sold 85 books and more than 90 works of short fiction, essays and reviews. She also composes music. She lives in Berkeley, Calif., with three autocratic cats. In 2003, the World Horror Association presented her with a Grand Master award; the International Horror Guild honored her as a Living Legend in 2006; and the Horror Writers of America presented her with a lifetime achievement award in 2009. Her latest in the Count Saint-Germain series is A Dangerous Climate (Tor, March 16, 2010).
On your nightstand now:
The French Revolution, Vol. 2, by Georges Lefebvre; Language on Vacation by Dmitri Borgmann; The Chinese Bell: A Judge Dee Mystery by Robert van Gulik; and The Model by Robert Aickman.
Favorite book when you were a child:
Horton Hatches the Egg--the one that I learned to read on.
Your top five authors:
Shakespeare, Shakespeare, Shakespeare, Shakespeare and Roger Zelazny.
Book you've faked reading:
Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter.
Book you're an evangelist for:
I don't evangelize for books, or anything else, for that matter. I do like to proselytize for words, like esurience (fixated hunger, very handy in vampire books), chiliastic (theology based on the arrival of the millennium, as compared to apocalyptic theology, based on the end of the world) and glabrous (smooth-skinned).
Books you've bought for the cover:
I can't remember the last time I did that. I do buy books for interesting titles.
Book that changed your life:
Horton Hatches the Egg, for the reason cited above.
Favorite line from a book:
There are too many good ones to have a single favorite.
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
Alice in Wonderland, if I could be seven again to do it.
