Unauthorized Interview with Sexy Whopping Apples, Part 3.

(Parts 1 and 2 may appear immediately below)

SWA: Now, the book takes place in a village called Hmmm.
Where is Hmmm located exactly?

RM: In the book. As the book is in the village.

SWA: I mean, Is there an actual place in the world
you were thinking of when you wrote about Hmmm?

RM: Oh. I was thinking of a combination of both Alaska, the Cape of
Good Hope, ancient Fresno, the Catskills, the Great Wall of China,
and primal Spain.

SWA: May I say there doesn't seem to be anybody in charge
in Hmmm?

RM: You may, but I would suggest that everybody is in charge.
Once you get a village oiled and humming along, it pretty much
runs itself, like a cactus, or a rusty can.

SWA: Now, at one point, Lemuel mentions the village computer, and
that he's 163th in line to use it. That surprised me, because
I had believed the story takes place in, oh, the 1950s perhaps?

RM: The gravity is lighter there, requiring less energy, so
the clocks run faster and don't use up as much time. Hmmm
uses the Gnelnm calendar, a more flexible sense of time
based on the Tao and the general mood of the village.

SWA: How does one measure the "general mood of the village"?

RM: It's in the Zeitschmaultz.

SWA: The what?

RM: That's German for Geistvelten.

SWA: I think you're making up words.

RM: Not on purpose. If I was going to make up words, I wouldn't make
up German words. It's enough of those already.

SWA: Lemuel, your protagonist, seems to get in a lot of conversations,
but he also becomes quite agitated when they don't go his way.

RM: I wouldn't call it agitated if your foe in the conversation keeps
ignoring the rules.

SWA: The rules of conversation?

RM: Yes, Lemuel starts most conversations, and whoever starts a
conversation ought to get to decide which way it goes.

SWA: Do you happen to have any pictures of the animal?

RM: I have had some pictures of the animal, but he retains
the rights.

SWA: How does an animal retain the rights to pictures?

RM: By eating them. I suspect he heard that pictures steal
a part of his soul, and that he could get the parts back if
he ate them.

SWA: That can't be good for him.

RM: It would be worse for anybody that tried to stop him.

SWA: Who.

RM: Anybody.

SWA: You said "that tried", it should be "who tried".

RM: That who tried what?

SWA: Without giving anything away, there's a project, shall
we say, in a certain area of the cottage, and it involves stolen
items from somewhere, quite a few stolen items. Is there any kind
of moral compass that guides the, shall we say, project manager?

RM: Without giving anything away, shall we say, no. That animal
has the morals of a sack of gumballs.

SWA: Keeping that in mind, do you think this is a book for children?

RM: I wouldn't even let a impressionable adult read this book.

SWA: Who's the audience for the book, then?

RM: Underemployed 14th Century shepherds. I think it would cheer
them up, or at least confuse them for a while, and I wonder
what more you could ask for from literature.

(Part 4 may be coming soon, depending on the Weltenzeist.)