Ask The Author: Wendy C. Ortiz

The amazing and well-worth-your-time to read, “Interiors,” was published in the April Issue.

1. What are you willing to destroy for love?

My definitions of love have completely been wrung out, stretched, flung out into space and back in recent years so that when I think of what I’d destroy for love, I immediately think of the love I’ve experienced since having my daughter. That said, this question is weirdly simple: I’d destroy fucking anything that came between me and my daughter and the love that resides between us–taking into account that there are any number of ways to interpret “destroy.”

2. How much of you is in your fiction?

My most recent fiction features a precocious, thoughtful young girl abducted and entrenched in an underground child porn network (“Black Car Land” in Specter Magazine) and a woman self-sequestered in a sham marriage and a house in the forest who is part of an underground organization plotting an unidentified but massive monkeywrench of the powers that be. I would say a part of me (sliver, splice, or tiny point of light) is always present in my fiction.

3. What is your preferred sex soundtrack?

M.I.A.’s entire discography.

4. How much faith do you put in futons?

Not much at all. I was a believer in futons for many years, but it got to be too much to try to move those behemoths up and down stairs, into moving vans, etc.

5. What do you miss the most?

Sleeping in, road trips, camping, the courage and stupidity it took to ingest random pills and powders as a teenager, being able to sit alone, in silence, inside my house for one day a week, the structures of work life (I’m a full-time mother, among other things), access to infinite office supplies in that structured work life, Olympia, Washington, and the willful ignorance that allowed me to drink Diet Cokes and smoke cigarettes whenever I wanted (among other things).

6. What movie do you inappropriately laugh at the most?

This was a difficult question because I’m very rigid when it comes to what movies I’ll watch. I am not interested in romantic comedies, and have a narrow tolerance for comedies in general. I hate musicals. I bypass blockbusters for the most part. So, when I think of the movie I laugh at and appreciate that might be considered somewhat inappropriate, I guess I would say The Exorcist? It touches my brought-up-Christian-funny bone. It scares and titillates me. It’s outrageous, absurd, and horrifying. I know much of the dialogue by heart. Oh, on that note, Carrie! Absolutely. “They’re all gonna laugh at you! They’re all gonna laugh at you!” I want to believe I’d be one of Carrie’s allies, but I might laugh and then she’d destroy me, and I’d deserve it.