Quotes from Gail Carriger

Oh, Lady Maccon, I am unreservedly in love with her. That black hair, that sweet disposition, those capital hats.

I like powerful women, and I gravitate to any point in history when a female has significant power. I can spend hours researching any such amazing lady, from Ching Shih to Hatshepsut to Boudica to Zenobia.

I don't want my writing to be work to read. My main goal is completely shameless entertainment. I want people to smile and giggle and enjoy the book. I'm not trying to save the world through literature.

Laughter is healing and helpful and fun, and I see my role as an entertainer, and I want readers to leave my books smiling.

Smoke machines are the best!

I get really flowery and verbose in my adult books, but I don't think I dumb down my Y.A. It's just cleaner and more snappy. And the adult books have multiple points-of-view. In my Y.A., it's always third person from the main character's perspective.

I suspect it may be like the difference between a drinker and an alcoholic; the one merely reads books, the other needs books to make it through the day.

How ghastly for her, people actually thinking, with their brains, and right next door. Oh, the travesty of it all.

To the best of my knowledge, my youngest reader is 10 and the oldest is 95.

She was no closer to determining who might want her dead. There were just too many possibilities.

I'm a Reuben kinda girl, but I'll take a BLT with avocado in a red hot minute if it comes on ciabatta.

Alexia figured, delightedly, that this meant he did, in fact, tend to traipse around his private apartments in the altogether. Marriage was becoming more and more of an attractive prospect.

I like to spoof the original Gothic classics, so there is also good dose of comedy in the 'Parasol Protectorate' - giggling readers are good.

A woman, even a married woman, cannot float without proper escort. It is simply not done.

I consider science fiction and fantasy my genre. And I've noticed over the years that there doesn't tend to be a lot of lighthearted, comedic stuff.

Occasionally, if I am very confident in the establishment, I'll risk an egg salad on Dutch crunch, but I must be very confident indeed.

I like certain subgenres within science fiction and fantasy, and one of those is urban fantasy, and another is steampunk.

As for genre, my adult books are usually filed under science fiction / fantasy, although some stores put them into romance, and few have stuck them into horror. I consider all my books a mix of steampunk and urban fantasy.

A vampire, like a lady, never reveals his true age.

Most of the names in my books have secondary meaning. Sometimes they foreshadow; sometimes they tell you about the character's origin or back story.

And I find perfect beauty excessively boring, don't you?

My absolute favorite food of all time is alpaca.

I love the Victorian era, and I always have, but I had a leg up on the writing because I was familiar with a lot of the science from the Victorian era. And that led to a massive interest in the science of this time of history.

To me, steampunk and urban fantasy are naturally hinged together. And I think that's because I love the early gothic Victorian literature, and both things spring from that movement.