IN THE SPOTLIGHT: AN INTERVIEW WITH ELIZABETH KINGSTON

I’m delighted to welcome Historical Romance author ELIZABETH KINGSTON to Rakes and Rascals today for an exclusive interview.

I’m very delighted to be here and thrilled at the opportunity to blather on about myself, it’s one of my favorite hobbies. Thanks so much for asking me!

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R&R:
Could you tell us where you were born and what it was like growing up there?

Elizabeth:
I was born and raised in Northwest Indiana, about 45 minutes outside of Chicago. Nearly everyone who lived there worked for the nearby steel mills – this was back in the 1970s when the industry was thriving. My town was far enough away from the mills that we neither saw nor smelled them: 20 minutes in one direction and you were at the mills, 10 minutes in the opposite direction and you were in corn fields. It didn’t feel very special, but I realize now how lucky I was to be raised in a town of immigrants. People from all over had moved to the area for the jobs the mills offered.

Nearly everyone I knew growing up was either a child (or grandchild) of immigrants, which I think made me endlessly curious about other places in the world. My family had “emigrated” from Kentucky, where they’d lived since the 18^th century, and our little Indiana town was desperately boring and insufficiently exotic for me. All I did was dream of getting out and living somewhere more exciting! Eventually I did – I went to Italy on a one-way plane ticket when I was 19, and many other thrilling places as life went on. But until I could do that, I escaped into books for my whole childhood, like so many of us do, and found the rest of the world in their pages. It’s charming now, to think of my pre-internet self, sitting in Indiana and obsessively reading encyclopedia entries about Scotland and Turkey and Tahiti, jealous of all the other kids who had family in other countries they could visit one day.

 

R&R:
How would you describe yourself – temperamental or easy-going?

Elizabeth:
Hm, well I suppose since my immediate reaction to the question was to shout “False dichotomy!” in my head, the answer has to be Temperamental, right?

Even as a child, I was temperamental

 

R&R:
When it comes to food do you like sweet or savoury or both?

Elizabeth:
False dichotomy!

But really, I have what we can safely call a sugar addiction which I strive, with limited success, to keep under control. However – possibly due to all the fantastic immigrant-influenced food I grew up eating – I crave highly spiced food daily. When I discovered Indian cuisine, I was in heaven!

 

R&R:
What is your most treasured possession?

Elizabeth:
Honestly, I’m looking around my apartment trying to imagine what might break my heart to lose, but there’s nothing, really. Not to bring the party down, but a few years ago my apartment was broken into while I was at work. The only thing they took was an old (rather useless) laptop before the thieves realized my 20-year-old niece was asleep in her room, and they left without taking anything else. (Thank heavens they were just petty thieves and obviously desperate to not get caught!) After the relief of knowing my niece was safe and unharmed, it just completely changed my feelings on my possessions. I realized that, so long as I still have the people I love, literally every object I own could burn and I wouldn’t be anything more than a little bummed out. If you told me I had 30 seconds to grab what I could before my home was wiped out, I’d be at a total loss. I mean, probably I’d grab my laptop and my purse – and the library books, if I had the time, I couldn’t let library property be destroyed!

All that said, I do really, really love my bike – a Pashley Princess in racing green. Also I treasure this extra tube of a particularly beloved but discontinued pink lip gloss, and all my Laura Kinsale paperbacks. If I lost any of those things, I’d cry a lot.

 
My Favourite things

                                                                                                                                           

R&R:
If you could afford a second home anywhere in the world where would you choose and why?

Elizabeth:

Well I live in Chicago so I’m picking a second home on a tropical beach in a place that’s serviced by non-stop flights. Mexico, maybe, near where I went on vacation once in Tulum, it’s just gorgeous there. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll take anywhere in the Caribbean. I’d happily become a snowbird, ditching this town for a few months every winter. Oh man, what a dream that would be.

 Tulum

 

R&R:
Finally, what has been your most embarrassing moment?

Elizabeth:
I have such a cornucopia of humiliations, of course, that it’s hard to choose. I’ve wet my pants, asked a non-pregnant woman when the baby was due, gone through a job interview with lipstick on my teeth – the whole gamut. But here’s one that typifies my particular brand of cluelessness, where I only learn of my embarrassing behavior retroactively: Once in college a friend invited me to a get-together at a bar, with a group of people that often got together to discuss philosophy and literature. I SWEAR she said philosophy and literature, okay? This totally cute guy I’d seen on campus was going to be there, so I jumped at the chance to go and impress him with my smarty-pants intellectual conversation. After an evening of several beers and my combatively challenging everyone’s clearly biased positions on capitalism and sneering at their “childish moralizing,” my friend apologized for my behaviour and escorted me home, where she wondered why on earth I’d been so insulting to a bible study group.

Um yeah, I never heard from the cute guy. Who turned out to be a pastor in training and probably didn’t appreciate all the F-bombs I’d thrown in while rolling my eyes at everything he believed in. I’m a real class act sometimes.

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Thank you for taking time out to be here today and sharing these interesting facts about yourself, Elizabeth. 

Thanks so much for having me, it’s been great fun!

 

If you would like to find out more about Elizabeth and her books, here are the links:

Website
Goodreads
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