Post by CASSIUS MAXWELL DUFFY on Mar 4, 2013 23:26:38 GMT -8
CASSIUS M. DUFFY THIRTY-FOUR | STRAIGHT | AUTHOR | LOCAL | MATT BOMER THE INTERVIEW HELLO. THANKS FOR COMING IN TODAY. SHALL WE START WITH YOUR NAME? I'm Cassius Maxwell Duffy, but please, call me Cash. THAT'S A NICE NAME. WHAT DO YOU DO FOR A LIVING? I'm an author. Mostly espionage novels, but other genres find their way out of my brain sometimes. I'm no Ian Fleming, but my books are getting kinda popular, so I'm pretty content with that. Haven't topped the best sellers list yet, but I will. I'm a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to my writing, so I refuse to quit until I've done that. INTERESTING. WHAT DO YOU DO FOR FUN? I tend to have a lot of free time, so I spend a lot of it 'conducting research' for my novels. Sky diving, sailing, shooting... Pretty much anything I think my characters might get up to. Or I could include them getting up to. Otherwise, I play rugby. When I get banged up from that, I end up stuck at home for a bit, so when I am, I like to knit. It's calming. Other than that, I don't get up to much besides writing. I like being occupied by some activity or task, being idle drives me mad. Laziness irritates me, so I try to avoid it. Sometimes this means doing menial tasks, like organizing the books in my office by the Dewey Decimal System, or shopping for groceries. Anything is better than doing nothing. Even shopping, as much as I hate it. WOULD YOU SAY THOSE ACTIVITIES REFLECT WHO YOU ARE? Yeah, I guess so. I'm a bit of an adrenaline addict. I'm also a bit hyperactive, I suppose is the best way to put it. I've never been good at sitting still for long unless I was focused on something I really care about. Because of that, I can be a little forgetful sometimes. I'll start something, get bored, and forget to ever finish. I've got over a dozen half-written novels collecting dust on my hard drive, and those are only the ones I remember not finishing. When I was younger, I used to be a bit of a playboy. Actually, I was a regular Casanova. Commitment wasn't even a thought for me. All I cared about was having someone pretty to fawn over me. That was pretty much my only standard back then. It got me into plenty of trouble, but I've matured, I like to think. I guess my need for attention is a little narcissistic, but there are worse things to be. At this point in my life, I'm ready to settle down. I'm married, my wife and I are trying to have a baby, and we're more than happy together. All I want now is to raise a family. That doesn't mean I'm going to stop doing things like sky diving or rugby, though. It just means that after all that, instead of coming home to an empty house, I'll come home to a family. That sounds like heaven to me. COOL BEANS. THEY SAY YOUR FAMILY SHAPES WHO YOU ARE. WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOURS? Family has always been a little complicated for me. My mom died when I was a toddler, and my dad ran out not long after. My mom's siblings all helped raise me after that. Aunt Rowan was my maternal figure, and I don't think I could have asked for a better one. I didn't live with her often, because she had her own kids, but whenever I needed a mom, she was there. My uncles, Mackenzie and Alasdair, were both father figures to me, though drastically different in parenting styles. They'd been living together before I was even born, mostly because neither of them would give up the house my grandparents left to both of them. That's where I grew up, for the most part. My childhood was far from dull. My uncles rarely got along, and both were fairly stubborn. I suppose a lot of my own personality traits and behaviors have some base in what I observed them doing when I was a child. As I said, they had drastically different parenting styles, which left me confused sometimes. While Uncle Mackenzie has always been a man who knows how to have fun, he can be really scary when you disobey him. He rarely set any serious rules, though, so that wasn't a huge problem. Typically, he was more of a friend or co-conspirator than a responsible guardian, but I enjoyed that. My Uncle Alasdair, on the other hand, is a total snob. That's not the wording the rest of the family uses to describe him, but I feel like snob is a bit more flattering than 'self-righteous, uptight, narcissistic wanker'. I'm pretty sure that's what his most recent ex-wife said when she broke the news to him. Anyway, he wasn't much fun, most of the time. He was the one to push me in school, nag about my eating habits, have a panic attack the first time I came home from a rugby game with a broken rib. He cared, though, and that was always clear. I was a bit bratty about it as a kid, but now, I really appreciate it. He wasn't ever able to have kids of his own, so I'm the closest he's got. I can understand his overreactions to some things, you know? Besides my aunt and uncles, I've got a few cousins. Aunt Rowan has three kids, Michael, who is a year older than I am, and Guinevere and Paul, who are in their mid-twenties. We all get along, but I'm not very close with the twins. When I was a kid, Michael and I played together a lot. We're not as close as we used to be, but as kids, I considered him one of my best friends. Uncle Mackenzie has four kids, Ellis, Devon, Flora, and Callum. Devon is twenty-two, and an industrial artist. He and I have always gotten on, though we're not particularly close. Flora is sixteen, and like a baby sister to me. We're pretty close, despite rarely seeing each other anymore. Callum is the youngest, and only nine years old. He's a pretty good kid, a little dim sometimes, but he's got a personality that makes up for it. He thinks I'm pretty cool, and I may have him convinced that a couple of my novels are autobiographies, but the hero-worship is fun. I saved Ellis for last because of the four, she's the one who knows me best. She's just a few months older than I am, so we've always been together. Since we were in diapers, we've been getting into trouble as a team. We used to talk about having awesome adventures, and becoming spies like the ones we played make-believe as. She's still my best friend, and we actually live together. Like me, she's a little hyperactive, so she moves around a lot. My home is kind of like a recharging point for her, but I don't mind at all. About a year ago, I got married to a beautiful woman, named Charlotte. She's... She's the love of my life. I can't imagine loving anyone the way I love her. Our personalities have a big contrast between them, but we make it work. We recently moved to Brunswick, so we could be near her family. We're trying to start a family, so we wanted to be somewhere that we could have a real home. Other than our cat, Princess, that's it. She's like a child to us, so she's a little spoiled. I can't remember her breed, but she's a purebred cat apparently. I hadn't really known that was a thing before I met Charlotte, who had owned Princess for about two years before we met. She's a diva, which is a good thing, I suppose, being as she's a prize-winning show cat. At first, we didn't get along well, but after she realized that I wasn't going to steal Charlotte from her or suddenly leave, she opened up. I have a hard time getting her to leave me alone now, actually. I've considered getting a dog or two as well, being as I've always loved dogs, but I worry about Princess getting jealous. AND YOUR LIFE? TELL ME ABOUT YOUR PAST. I'M EAGER TO HEAR. Well, like I mentioned earlier, I was basically orphaned as a toddler. My mother... She was a woman with many problems. My father was one of them. He was a drunk, and while he never laid a hand on her, he made her miserable in plenty of other ways. I guess that eventually, it got to be too much. Maybe she suffered from depression, and his emotional abuse pushed her too far, or maybe she just didn't see a future where anything got better... Whatever the reason, she committed suicide. When I was a child, I was always told that her death was an accident. I was seventeen when I discovered a news article about her death that reported it as suicide. After my mother's death, my father left. I don't know if it was guilt, or shame, or maybe even heartbreak, but he was gone less than a week after her funeral. I haven't heard much from him since, aside from the occasional phone call or birthday card. It was at this point that custody of me was given to my Uncle Alasdair. Legally, he was my guardian, though my aunt and other uncle did more than their fair share of raising me. I've mostly lost my accent and become almost entirely American, but I grew up in Scotland. My family has a lot of land there... You could say I grew up as a spoiled rich kid. As a child, I never lacked anything. Any toy I wanted, I got. Any dreams I wanted to pursue, I was given opportunities to do so. I did share with my cousins, but that wasn't a source of conflict for us. In fact, more often than not, we would all play together. My childhood, ignoring the loss of my parents, wasn't at all traumatic. In fact, it was pretty good. School was always a bit of a challenge for me. I had trouble focusing, and spent a lot more time goofing off with Ellis than actually doing homework. That didn't last too long, though. We attended a private primary school, so any bad behavior was dealt with immediately. When my uncles found out, they were both furious. That was actually the first time I ever saw Uncle Mackenzie mad. I'd seen him irritated, or faking anger, but this was completely genuine. Usually Uncle Alasdair was the one to deliver long lectures, but this time it was Uncle Mackenzie. I've only actually had him lecture me like that five times, and I remember each one. As much as making him angry was terrifying, seeing the anger turn into disappointment was so much worse. After that incident, I started trying harder. I still wasn't anywhere near the top of the class, but I was passing. The rest of my early school years were uneventful. When I was old enough, I was shipped off to the same prep school for boys that my uncles and father had attended. I started playing sports there, mostly football and rugby, but others if players were needed. Popularity wasn't much of an issue for me. My aunt always said that I inherited my charm from my father, 'who was such a smooth talker he could sell fire to the devil'. I'm not sure if that's true, or her exaggerating things again, but I don't think it particularly matters. While away at school, I got into plenty of mischief, though I'd finally figured out how to cover my tracks. Sneaking out of the dorms was like taking candy from a baby. I did it pretty often, usually sneaking into the town near the school or the girl's school just a mile away. Relationships didn't matter to me, back then. I was just interested in the attention being a playboy got me. Plus, it was the stereotype. What kind of spoiled rich kid would I be if I didn't live up to that? Other than sleeping my way through the girl's school, my only real excitement was sports. I'm not as good as I used to be, but I was captain of the football and rugby teams in my final year. Sports were great, for me. I liked having a team, feeling that sense of community. Having brothers, of a sort. I was scouted for sports scholarships, but I turned them down. I was capable of paying for my schooling myself, so I did. I majored in journalism, with all intentions to travel the world as a reporter. In my third year of university, I started writing fiction. A lot of the stuff I wrote was based off of games my cousins and I had played together as children. Eventually, I had a book written. With encouragement from my family, I submitted it for publishing. It took several attempts and dozens of 'final drafts', but I was eventually published. That was one of the most exhilarating moments of my life. That was when I knew that I wanted to write fiction, not report the news. Fast forward about seven years, and I'd written an additional four books. Another two, and I was at seven. That's when I met Charlotte. Our first meeting was actually pretty funny. She was the goddaughter of my Aunt Rowan's friend, and staying with my aunt for a few days while she did business in town. I'd come home for a visit, and ended up meeting her in the kitchen of my aunt's house. She was sitting at the table, reading one of my books. I asked her opinion of it, and she said that she thought it was 'riddled with cliches and tropes'. That made me laugh harder than I had for a long time. Of course, she was confused and just thought I was a lunatic until I introduced myself. At which point, she apologized, but stood by her opinion. For me, it was love at first sight. We dated for about a year before we got married. For the majority of that time, we lived in New York. I became a US citizen, and we started talking about having a family together. When we decided that we were really ready for this, we moved here. This is her hometown, so she wanted to be close to her family. Her family is wonderful, so I was more than happy to do it. That's pretty much the story of my life up to now. I probably over shared, but I like to be honest. What about a secret? Everyone has a secret. I recently found out that I have a child. A fourteen year old daughter, and her mother is wanting her to move here to live with me. My wife has no idea. ALRIGHT. TIME'S ALMOST UP. TELL ME ABOUT YOUR DREAMS. QUICK! My dreams? I want to be a best selling author. I want to have a family with my wife. Mostly, I want to be a better father than my own was. AND THAT'S A WRAP. IT WAS NICE GETTING TO KNOW YOU. Yes, thank you. I just hope I didn't tell you more than you wanted to know. BEHIND THE MASK EMILY | 18 | PACIFIC | I SAW AN AD, BUT FORGOT WHERE | NO OTHER CHARACTERS Setting the mug of coffee on his desk, Cash bent down to pet his cat before sitting down. As he turned on his computer, he started trying to come up with ideas. He'd hit a wall in his current project, and nothing would remove it. At this point, he was seriously considering killing off a character just for the purpose of moving the plot forward. He really hated doing that, considering it semi-lazy, but if he couldn't think of anything else... What choice did he have? Sighing as he picked up his coffee, he looked over to his cat. "Hey there, Princess. What do you think I should do? I could kill off the sidekick, but I actually really like him. What about you?" Despite knowing that the cat neither could, nor would, answer, he continued to stare at her, as if she held the answer. Meowing in a slightly disgruntled fashion, she got out of her cat bed, only to climb onto his lap. Absentmindedly scratching her ears, he went back to trying to come up with ideas. A sudden betrayal? New gadgets? A love interest? Actually, that last one wasn't that bad. After all, what would a spy be without a love interest? Yes, that would work. But how to introduce her? Perhaps combining the love interest and sudden betrayal plots would work. Once an underling to the villain, she decides that she doesn't believe in his ideals, and turns against him. She rescues the hero, who immediately tries to flirt. His early advances are ignored, but now, working in close proximity as a team, they begin to develop feelings for each other. Perfect. Standing up with a victory cry, he looked down with surprise when he heard a hiss. Dropping Princess was pretty much the fastest way to get her to dislike him for a short time. Cash wasn't concerned about that, though, as he sat back down. Opening the document his work was saved in, he quickly found where he'd left off. As he ignored the cat, he began typing rapidly, trying to get his idea written before he forgot. He had work to do. |
