Please Welcome Back Red Tash!

Okay, ladies and gentlemen, in the last couple of months or so, I had hosted Red Tash for the Blog Tour in which I'm a participant. I had fun and she had fun. Okay, so she rocked the socks off that post and I had such a good time I sent her some extra interview questions and we decided to do it again. SOOOOO, if you'll lend me your ear, your eye (or both of them) and your attention, let's welcome back Red Tash, author of This Brilliant Darkness!



RJ Palmer:

Red Tash seems to be a remarkably intelligent and somewhat devil-may-care alter ego of yours of whom I am particularly fond. You had mentioned that Red is yet another alter ego at one point. Just how many do you have? Which is your strongest? Your weakest?



Red Tash:

Oh, thanks for asking. You could probably be an entertainment journalist, because these are the same kinds of questions I would ask people. ;)



I used to play roller derby, and when a gal joins a roller derby team nowadays, she gets to make up a goofy/funny/dirty/intimidating name. I *really* wanted to be Hermione Danger, but that was taken by a skater in Chicago. If you reference the official roster of rollergirl names at http://www.twoevils.org/rollergirls/, you will see that each name must be unique. It's just roller derby tradition.



So…I pouted for awhile, and then a skater by the name of Kimmy Crippler suggested to me "How about Tyra Durden?" I am such a Fight Club fan, I just went nuts. I knew that was the name for me. Just like Tyler Durden frees "Jack" in Fight Club to do whatever dark deeds he conceives of, Tyra freed me to break out of my full-time Mom status, to leave the house, to have a drinkie-poo once in awhile, to wear crazy roller derby clothes, pierce my nose, color my hair pink & purple…oh, yeah, and to kick a little ass at roller derby, too.



I wrote more about that here, if you're interested: http://newsandtribune.com/family/x519381293/ONE-BAD-MAMA-Family-life-columnist-skates-away-to-join-Derby-City-Rollergirls



As far as other alter-egos go, I guess I was thinking of all those usernames we create for ourselves online. I've been at least five I can think of off the top of my head—and that's a lot to try and remember. Honestly, though, I'm really glad that most net users are "over" the anonymous handle thing. I feel like that's part of the net's infancy and best left in the past, unless you've got a very good reason for masking your identity. I just use a pen name for my fiction because it makes sense to separate my fiction from my non-fiction, and having Red Tash is a great way to separate those two "public selves." Plus, my real first name is more often than not misspelled.



RJ Palmer

You had told me that you're a professional journalist. Do you moonlight as your alter egos or do you moonlight as yourself and let the alter egos take the front the rest of the time?



Red Tash

Well, I took a leave of absence from my ongoing journalism assignments for maternity leave in March of 2011, and had planned to resume my work in May. When May rolled around, I was already deeply ensconced in editing This Brilliant Darkness and getting it ready to go, so I decided to put *paying work* off a bit longer. I didn't settle on the pen name Red Tash until after that, so, thus far, this hasn't been an issue. I used to write some roller derby journalism as Tyra Durden, but that was a drop in the bucket compared to the body of work I produced under my real name.



I think what you're really asking with a question like this is basically how does someone weird like me fit into the capacity of working as a reporter?



(RJ Palmer here and on a side note from me, I'd have used a word like "interesting" or "unique" instead of "weird" but hey, you said it, I didn't! Now back to Red.)



Do I put on a pretty face and look all professional? Or do I show up with a bone through my nose and smelling of bourbon? If I want to entertain you, I'll create some false anecdote about the latter, but the truth is, although I'm working on honing my own personal brand of weirdness into a laser beam of pure awesomeness, both these sides of me are legitimately me. So…what you see is pretty much what you get. The fact that I write about monsters and time travel and quantum physics doesn't typically come up when I'm interviewing a convicted murderer about his guilty verdict, or stopping by the mayor's house to do a write-up of his wife's home décor. People are, by and large, more interested in talking about themselves than learning anything about me. They want to be the story. You know what I mean?



RJ Palmer:

You've shown a keen eye for stunning photography and dark, brooding art. Are there other things that bend your artistic eye or tickle the right hemisphere of the ol' brain there?



Red Tash:

I love music. So much music. I've started posting playlists, and I'll keep trying to put them together. It's hard to listen to music in my house, and I rarely get any time alone, so that is an ongoing battle. That's motherhood, though. It kicks the feet right out from under your "cool" quotient. A bunch of my friends saw the Pixies this past Wednesday night, here in Louisville. I was sick with jealousy.



RJ Palmer:

Do you ever get the urge to write out something incredibly profound in 72 point script and the most ghastly color you can imagine so that the profundity of the statement itself is lost amid the screaming ugliness of the print? I know I do from time to time which is why I asked and if this gives you an idea, tell me what you would write.



Red Tash:

Ha! Yes! Of course! Back when I used to blog at xanga, I had a pretty vibrant web following. They were very responsive to everything I posted. I got thousands of hits per week. Crazy! Well, I loved those people, but I used to experiment on them a lot. I'd hold contests and reward them, I'd mess with them to see if they'd notice. I'd see how they'd react on any given day to what I did, and I think they enjoyed the unpredictability of it, because a lot of those readers are still my friends. Every now and then, I'd weed out the weirdos.



Once, when I was annoyed by something I'd read elsewhere on the web, I posted in huge pink letters on a red background something to the effect of "If you don't like what you're reading, don't leave a nasty comment, just unsubscribe and go away!" Only, I don't think I said it that nicely.



In about a half-hour, this woman blew up and flamed out. We'd never had a cross word between us, but I guess she was harboring some kind of grudge or something, because she just went nutso and started cursing me, posting profanity-laden blogs about me, and she even created a fake profile to cheer herself on, and defend herself against the stunned third parties who watched, aghast.



Previous to my post, she had set herself up as one of my biggest fans. She had been really, really nice to me. I remember looking forward to stopping by and meeting her when I was passing through her state, on vacation.



I don't know if what I said was profound, but it sure did make a splash. I recommend everyone experiment with their voice & their message from time-to-time. It teaches us a lot.



RJ Palmer:

I have to ask this because hearing about favorite quotes is something for me that's a little bit of an obsession. Do you have a favorite quote from a writer, or any quote at all? What is it and what does it mean to you?



Red Tash:

If I lose the light of the sun, I will write by candlelight, moonlight, no light. If I lose paper and ink, I will write in blood on forgotten walls. I will write always. I will capture nights all over the world and bring them to you.

~Henry Rollins



I think that pretty much says it all!



RJ Palmer:

I'm going to assume since you're a multi-dimensional person as it is that you also have multi-dimensional interests. What interests you as a general rule and why?



Red Tash:

I love to laugh. I love food. I love nature. I am ridiculously sentimental and I use facebook like a drug. I want to absorb and inhale the lives of my family & friends. I drown in their images, I delight in their status updates. Found a job today? Having trouble parking? Saw the fucking Pixies without me? I love it.



I watch a hell of a lot of movies, too. I wish it were easier to read with my hands full, but I have trouble doing that and folding laundry at the same time, so movies, it is.



RJ Palmer:

Do you put your left shoe or your right shoe on first? Okay, okay, you don't have to answer that unless you really, REALLY want to so here's another question: Be absolutely selfish for a moment and tell me, if you had ONLY one wish, what would it be? No fair saying stuff like "world peace" or "immortality" or "a billion dollars" because those are all way too easy.



Red Tash:

I wish I had parents.



RJ Palmer:

When was the moment you really figured out that you wanted to write for a living? Not when you announced it to the rest of the world, but when you figured it out for yourself. Were you hit by an inspirational thunderbolt when you were a wee one or did the lil angel on your shoulder have to slap you upside the head to get through to you? My slap still stings from time to time, just to let you know.



Red Tash:

I never wanted to write for a living. I mean, I did—just like I wanted to be a ballerina, a jockey, and an interpreter at the UN. What happened to me, as a writer, was that I ran from it. I ran hard from it and tried to do other things for a living. I was an accountant, for example. I tried being a teacher. I did a lot of stuff. But I just kept writing, so eventually I found outlets to do so for pay. And I started leveraging those into the next opportunity, and the next, and the next…



RJ Palmer:

If you had one "do over" in your whole life, would you take it and what would it be? Why?



Red Tash:

No.



I have regrets, but I forgive myself and I try to do better the next time. I like who I am because of my choices. I am authentically me, in Oprah-speak, and as it turns out, I dig that.



RJ Palmer:

If you could sit down and have a drink with anyone from the past, present or future, fictional or real who would it be and what do you imagine they would drink as a cocktail of choice? Why?



Red Tash:

I would drink absinthe with Edgar Allen Poe. 'Cuz you know that shit would be def. Or, God, what about drinking with Mark Twain? I bet that would be a riot, too. Bill Shatner in the early 80s, before he got sober. Imagine that. I'll take any of the above.



Thanks for interviewing me! I'll send you some questions this coming week.



There you have it, fellow wingnuts. A little insight and perhaps some wisdom from one of my favorite collegues, Red Tash. If you like what you see or find yourself at all intrigued, visit here and here to read her work and here to learn a little more about her.

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