Where Stories Are Made: Keri Arthur

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Where Stories Are Made is a regular feature here at Book Chick City. It's where the author takes us on a tour of their writing place, be it an office, coffee shop or park and tells us about their writing day and rituals. My guest today is fantastic urban fantasy writer, Keri Arthur...

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When Book Chick City first asked me to take some pics and do a short piece on where my stories are made, my first thought was, ‘oh God, I’d better clean up’. Because if we’re being brutally honest here, my office is a mess. I’ve never been the tidiest person in the world (a fact my mom will attest to), but I basically let all my untidiness hang out in my workspace. In fact, the one time I did clean up, I couldn’t find anything for weeks.

All my writing time is spent at my desk. It’s rare that I write elsewhere--my writing is my job, and my office my place of work. Outside of this room, it’s me time (although that doesn’t stop the brain from working. In fact, it has a bad habit of waking me at 3 in the morning with shiny new ideas.) I have a huge desk, and I need it because it has to hold two computers and a whole lot of mess… er, writing stuff.

My main writing computer is a desktop, which is lined with reminder notes that I generally ignore. My keyboard (which is depressingly tea stained) is one of those sweeping ergonomic ones, which I couldn’t do without simply because standard keyboards make my tendonitis flare up if I use them for too long. On top of my desktop is a selection of mainly vampire stuffed toys, although snoopy is there with his typewriter and there’s also the tail end of my piggy bank. It’s technically supposed to save small change for book buying sprees at conferences, but the poor thing never gets fed. The one thing you don’t see in this pic is my tea cup. It’s usually a fixture in any picture simply because I exist on tea when I write, but at the time of taking these pics, it was in the kitchen beside the kettle, waiting for a refill.

To the left of the keyboard are the latest lot of line edits I’ve been working on. These ones are Mercy Burns, which comes out Dec 28th. Behind that is my credit card--handily positioned for online purchases--and then there’s the speakers. I always listened to music when I write--I hate, hate, hate, silence. The louder it is, the better it is (much to the chagrin of my daughter, whose room is near my office. A mother’s revenge on the former teenager!)

The second pic features the end of my desk and my laptop, which is a recent purchase. The amount of viruses and malware I was getting through emails forced me to shift emails off my writing computer and onto something separate. I simply couldn’t afford to have my main computer infected again (last time it happened, I lost a heap of writing). Behind the end of the desk is a bookcase. I use this to store my all my author copies and text books, and more vampires, werewolves, wizards and dragons are a feature here.

In the last pic, there’s a wall bookcase which holds all my music (as well as another dragon and a Riley bear) and then there’s the dog. I have two, but this is Finn’s favorite spot in the house (as you can see by the wall behind him--it’s covered in his dirt.) Ella, my black lab, usually follows me around from room to room, but she was outside sunning herself when these were taken. We won’t mention the cupboard full of junk you get a glimpse of on the left side of the picture (nor will we note that it’s probably the tidiest bit of that cupboard!)

But that, basically, is it! Hope you enjoyed this rather messy glimpse into my writing space.

Cheers

keri

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**Next week on 'Where Stories Are Made': Jamie Rush**

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