To kick off our countdown to St. Patrick’s Day, StarkLight Press is featuring interviews with the gifted authors who helped make Shamrocks, Saints and Standing Stones: A StarkLight St. Patrick’s Day Anthology.
Our first interview is with Krista Michelle, whose piece, Journal Through Time, is based of the three prompts given her: the year 2000, New York, Faery. From this Krista wove her masterful St. Patrick’s Day tale.
When Krista Michelle isn’t travelling, working, spending time with family and friends, or misplacing her manuscripts; you’ll find her in coffee shops throughout her small British Columbia town, creating stunning fantasy worlds and speculative fictions. Her works include the collaborative novel, “The Concierge” and more short stories than she can count. She’s currently drafting her first independent novel, “The Keys”, and hopes it will be completed before she gets to the bottom of her coffee mug! You can check her out on Facebook: www.facebook.com/authorkristamichelle
Krista answered our interview questions about the holiday and this innovative writing assignment:
- What’s your most prominent memory of St. Patrick’s Day?
My most prominent memory of St. Patrick’s Day has been from when I was a child at school. We wore felt Leprechaun tophats, and coloured shamrock colouring pages, and wore green! If you didn’t wear green, you were likely to get a wee pinch from the other lads and lasses, in typical leprechaun tricks faerie style 
- Name the part of Irish culture you are most happy to lay claim to and why- is it Guinness? Irish music? The Book of Kells? The Fighting Irish?
The Irish culture I was most happy to lay claim to, was probably the knowledge that I am ¼ Irish descent: my Grandmother on one side was brought to Canada as a baby out of Ireland, and I always found it intriguing. I studied a lot on Irish culture when I was younger, and the culture I enjoy most is the farms, Irish music, and Celtic dancing.
- What are your thoughts on working with this sort of writing exercise, fueled by prompts? How did seeing the prompts of your fellow authors and chatting online together with them about the work affect your process?
I found that working on this sort of exercise, although personally not requiring prompts, has been fun. For me, prompts are ok if required; but, I love seeing where my ideas take me without, also.
Seeing the prompts of my fellow authors and chatting online together with them about the project affected my work greatly. It is nice to be able to write, and share an anthology with, so many talented writers of all ages and levels. I found I was looking forward to their posts about their individual progress, and I was happy to share mine also.
Here’s to future anthologies!!
