Pauline Baird Jones: To write a book as wonderful as Sorcerer's Stone. To have the books of my heart be New York Times Bestsellers and prove all the naysayers wrong.

World Peace. [Grins.] (Can you tell I've been watching Miss Congeniality?)

My real third wish would be to lose the thighs without having to exercise. Or that no one will be mad at me for forgetting to mention their names in this interview. Um, can I get another genie?)

Jeff Strand: Well, first I'd need to see if the genie had covered the "wishing for more wishes" loophole. If he had, then I'd look him over carefully, reading those subtle body language signals that might indicate whether or not he intended to pull some kind of freaky "Monkey's Paw" ironic twist on anything I wished for. If that cleared, my first wish would be for mint-flavored Snapple™ iced tea to be available in my area. My second wish would be that I had set the VCR to tape Survivor the night when I missed the episode where Alicia got voted out, because that's the only one I didn't get to see. And I'd donate my third wish to charity, because that's the kind of guy I am.

Crescent Blues: Do you have a day job? If so, does your employer know what you write?

Pauline Baird Jones: My day job is my writing, along with being a mom/spouse and cat caretaker. I think the cat would like me to give it up. And my family wishes I'd write under an assumed name. And make boatloads of money. Let's just hope they don't find that genie before I do.

Jeff Strand: I used to have a day job but I got better. My ex-employer knew what I wrote, but allowed me to interact with my co-workers anyway.

Crescent Blues: What is your honest reaction to me allowing the other person in this interview to ask you questions?

Pauline Baird Jones: Complete and total terror. Because I knew Jeff would be able to think of better questions than I would.

Jeff Strand: I can't wait. Bring it on, Pauline! Do your worst! Show me what you've got! You don't scare me!

Crescent Blues: Well, I must admit they both scare me, but I promised my editor I would let them question each other. (I wonder if anyone would notice if I just turned on the computer here and left the building with Elvis while I still can.)

Jeff Strand: Admit it, you were trying to score a product placement deal with all the Diet Dr. Pepper™ and M&M™ references in The Last Enemy, weren't you?

Pauline Baird Jones: Well, yes, but only because I really believe that they should both be added to the food pyramid.

Crescent Blues: (So much for leaving the building.) Pauline, could you explain what product placement is and why it's desirable?

Pauline Baird Jones: I don't know a lot about product placement, but I think whenever you see a product like Diet Dr. Pepper™ or Coke™ in a movie, the company that produces the product has paid to have it placed so that the brand can be seen. Since money is the lifeblood of a production, any way they can get it is a good thing for a producer. (Jeff may answer this better.)

Jeff Strand: Product placement is when a product or service appears in a film, and the studio gets something in return, like cash. The product placement craze started when sales of Reese's Pieces™ skyrocketed after being featured in the movie E.T. Product placement can be unobtrusive (a character just happens to be drinking Snapple, a wonderful, wonderful beverage that everybody should consume), or flat-out obnoxious, like in the TV show Survivor.

Crescent Blues: [Whispering] Back to Jeff's questions for Pauline.

Jeff Strand: Do you ever laugh out loud at what you're writing?

Pauline Baird Jones: I tried it once and my family wanted to know what the joke was, so I just giggle maniacally now.

Crescent Blues: Jeff, what about you? Do you laugh out loud when you are writing, or do you just emit an evil chuckle now and again?

Jeff Strand: The most I ever get out of myself is a wicked grin, and that doesn't happen very often. I'm just too close to the joke. I do kiss my reflection in the mirror and call myself brilliant, but I don't laugh out loud while I'm doing it.

Crescent Blues: Pauline and Jeff, while we are more or less on the same subject, when you are writing or mentally plotting do you wave your arms, aim imaginary guns, shrink in terror or exhibit other forms of writerly behavior?

Pauline Baird Jones: I was shopping one day and thinking, what would my character do in a grocery store? How would she move through the store, etc. Next thing I knew, I was singing along with the store music, something I would never do (being a very uptight Wyoming-ite). So I guess the answer to this question would be, unfortunately, yes.

Jeff Strand: I do all of the above. Oh, no, wait... you said imaginary guns...

Pauline, which is the hardest to write: comedy, romance, or suspense?

Pauline Baird Jones: Yes.

Crescent Blues: I seem to be interrupting fairly often, but I have to know this. Pauline, from your succinct answer to Jeff's questions it seems that you find all aspects of writing hard. What do you find the most difficult? Beginnings? Character development? Plot? Different things for different books?

Pauline Baird Jones: It's easy and hard for me. It all depends. When I wrote Pig In A Park, the words just flooded out of me. The hard part was writing fast enough to get them all. I'd go to bed at night with the ends of my fingers numb from writing. Last Enemy was a fairly smooth write, too, but Do Wah Diddy and Byte Me were like giving birth. I don't know why it was so, because I like those books, too.

I think different books challenge me in different ways. I finish one and I think, "Okay, now you know how to do it." And then I'll get an idea that I know will challenge me, and I want to whine and go fetal. I have to say that when I'm in the "zone," like a runner, the pain fades and the writing is pure pleasure. But I always pay a price for getting into the zone.

Jeff Strand: What do you really think of the title changes from Pig in a Park to The Spy Who Kissed Me and I Love Luci (When I Don't Want to Kill Her) to Do Wah Diddy...Die?

Pauline Baird Jones: I always expected to have to change Pig in a Park, but does Desilu really need to own every form of "I Love Lucy?"

Jeff Strand: Do you prefer writing in first person or third person?

Pauline Baird Jones: Each one has it challenges, so I guess I prefer the one I'm with.

Jeff Strand: Which New Orleans establishment has the best muffaletta sandwich?

Pauline Baird Jones: Ooh, that's a loaded question. Central Grocery is where the muffaletta originated and there are those who think it's the best, but I like the ones at Napoleon House.

Crescent Blues: Pauline, you've told us where to find the best, but for those of us not initiated into the wonders of New Orleans' food, what is a "muffaletta" sandwich? How about the calorie count? The fat gram count? Or is it something that should be on every dieter's menu?

Pauline Baird Jones: If you have to ask about carbs and calories, you should not even go near a muffaletta. Basically, its this HUGE sandwich made of every kind of deli meat, then topped with this greasy, fat laden olive dressing. Actually, if you're on a diet, you should avoid New Orleans at all cost. Even the air has fat grams.

Jeff Strand: You once had the opportunity to meet with sensational author Jeff Strand in person, yet chose to leave town for some writing related business. Have you regretted this decision every day of your life since?

Pauline Baird Jones: Every waking moment.

Jeff Strand: If you had to choose between being a wildly successful screenwriter and a wildly successful novelist (and money wasn't a factor), which would you choose?

Pauline Baird Jones: Novelist, because you have more control over your content.

Crescent Blues: Jeff, you asked this question of Pauline. Now I would like to ask you the same question. If you had to choose between being a wildly successful screenwriter and a wildly successful novelist (and money wasn't a factor), which would you choose?

Jeff Strand: A novelist. Film is such a collaborative art form that when you watch a movie, you really have no idea how much credit (or blame) to give the screenwriter. You don't know if that brilliant flatulence joke appeared in the script, or if the actor just ad-libbed it on the set, or if the caterer came up with it, what. Of course, a hit movie is seen by many, many more people than will ever touch a best selling novel, but I'd still rather be a wildly successful novelist.

Pauline, have you ever considered writing something in just ONE genre, to make it more easily marketable?

Pauline Baird Jones: Yes, but every time I try to write a straight romance, someone dies, and I find I'm writing suspense again.

Jeff Strand: If you get bored with your movie deal, can I have it? Why or why not?

Pauline Baird Jones: Yes, because I've read your books and, well, we're friends, right? [Smiles.]

Crescent Blues: Pauline, Jeff wants your movie deal, and you agreed to give it to him when you no longer want it. Would you mind telling him (and us) what goes with it? Not just the joys, but the every day wait, work, hurry, and all else. When will the movie be released? Who is starring as Luci? Did you write the screenplay? How many rewrites have been done?

Pauline Baird Jones: Yes, I wrote the screenplay, and then I rewrote it and rewrote it and rewrote it. The hardest part was getting rid of so many characters. That's mostly what goes with a movie deal for a writer: rewriting until you no longer recognize your story. Mostly it's hurry and rewrite this and then wait. Long waits. In fact, I'm still waiting.

The production was poised to go forward and had some talent attached, but some of the financing fell through so we're completely in the "wait" zone. I have no release date, since we haven't started filming yet. Writers aren't that involved in the production unless you manage to get attached to produce, but I had hoped to be able to watch some of the filming, since it would have been onsite here in New Orleans. If they ever do get it together, I plan to post a film diary on my website. If I'm still here. [Grins wickedly.]

Crescent Blues: Now it's Pauline's turn to question Jeff.

Pauline Baird Jones: In Graverobbers Wanted (No Experience Necessary), Andrew Mayhem searches for five life-saving quarters, but only finds four. So where was that last quarter anyway?

Jeff Strand: Unlike some authors who know things like what their characters ate for breakfast even if there's no breakfast-eating scene in the book, I figure that if my lead character only finds four of the quarters, I don't need to waste precious brain cells deciding where the fifth one was hidden. (To you readers unfamiliar with the book, it should be pointed out that these quarters are attached to human body parts as part of a moderately sick little game.) But, what the heck? It was in the tailpipe.

Pauline Baird Jones: I got a chuckle out of Elrod, in Elrod McBugle on the Loose, talking about the angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other. Since my exposure to the angel/devil on my shoulder motif came from cartoons, I wondered if you watched cartoons as a child, what was your favorite, and which cartoon do you think has influenced your writing the most?

Jeff Strand: I watched a LOT of cartoons as a child, believe me. That's what Saturdays were for. My favorite changed from year to year, but for the purpose of giving an actual answer I'll say Mighty Mouse™. I don't think cartoons necessarily influenced my writing much, but I wish The Simpsons would rub off so I could write social satire that brilliantly.

Pauline Baird Jones: I've read books and seen movies where I asked myself, why didn't I think of that? But I just have to ask, how did you come up with the idea of rescuing a dead princess in How to Rescue a Dead Princess? I'd never have thought of that in a million years.

Jeff Strand: Actually, that plot device came from a very early, never-completed incarnation of the novel that I started in high school. I was just writing along, having no clue where things were headed, when all of a sudden I decided to kill the princess (though I can no longer remember the details of her tragic fate). The book didn't make it much further beyond that event, but the idea stuck, and a few years later I decided to use it as the main plot point in a novel.

Originally I wanted to keep it secret, as a completely unexpected plot twist, but when my agent at the time made me change the title from Pointless Quest, I came up with several alternates and How to Rescue a Dead Princess was easily the best one. After my agent and I parted ways, I decided that it was still a better title than the original, even though it spoiled the surprise.

Pauline Baird Jones: You have a hilarious short story in the collection Merry Musings called "Howard the Tenth Reindeer." Do you have any other short stories coming out any time soon? Is it a writing form that you enjoy or just a random anomaly?

Jeff Strand: "Howard the Tenth Reindeer" and "Wasting Grandpa" (from Scratching the Surface) will soon be available individually from Wordbeams as part of their upcoming Wordbeamettes line of short fiction. I'll also have a mini-collection of five short-short stories called Ghoulish Delights, Volume One in that line, but since short stories for me are just a random anomaly, I don't know if I'll do Volume Two.

Pauline Baird Jones: We "met" when I reviewed a screenplay you wrote on Zoetrope.com. I have to ask, why isn't Hollywood beating a path to your door?

Jeff Strand: Because Hollywood is dumb.

Pauline Baird Jones: I read the biography on your Web site (yes, all of it!) and was most interested to read you met your wife through e-mail. Did she read Single White Psychopath Seeks Same before saying "I do?"

Pauline Baird Jones and Jeff Strand Continued