Kate Fulford asked Cynthia Robinson:

How do you find your "interdisciplinary life" blends when it comes to fiction - do you bring of one life to another or a mix of all to all?

Cynthia Robinson Really good question!! It helps to be a hermit -- ;) -- I don't have kids, my guy lives on another continent, so I am able to be both a scholar and a writer of fiction. It does take some careful (obsessive...?) scheduling. And sometimes I lie to people and say I have plans and stay home and write. My two pet bunnies are fairly forgiving in their Human is deep in her computer, long as they get to go outside (safely fenced patio). My favorite is summer: a few hours of scholarship and then I use the patio garden (it's pretty elaborate for such a tiny thing) as a 'hinge' --a place where my brain can roam freely, always with a pen and post-its near--or 'bridge' to a few hours of fiction writing. And I am definitely finding that the novel I'm (hopefully) close to finishing now has a lot more of the 'scholarly' me in it, in terms of characters and material. And the one I am planning next is set partly in 14th century Granada, my academic stomping ground. I know for sure that writing fiction has made me a better academic writer. A lot of academic writing is pretty deadly boring, and that is an avoidable sin!

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