Rachelle Delaney

What’s the best thing about being a writer?

Other than waking up every morning knowing that your purpose is to write stories? It would have to be setting your own schedule, and doing laundry in the middle of the day when you don’t have to fight other apartment-dwellers for the dryers.

If you weren’t a writer, what would you be?

I like to think that I’d be a tree-canopy scientist. Or a mail carrier. Professional dog-walker is tempting too.

Scarlet McCray (in The Ship of Lost Souls) has a list of Most Despised. What’s yours?

I have issues with Styrofoam. And the term “lol”.

A few of your favourite things?

Sun. Camping trips. Chocolate. And if they’re all there at once, well, that’s just heavenly.

What’s the strangest job you ever had?

I once volunteered as a Slothwalker in Costa Rica. My job was to exercise injured three-toed sloths that were being rehabilitated. And it’s hard to believe, but one actually ran away on me.

You’re kidding, right?

Dead serious.

How about some book recommendations?

Oh, this could take a while. I’ll narrow it down to just a few:

Books for wee readers:

• The Paper Bag Princess by Robert Munsch
• Click Clack Moo: Cows That Type by Doreen Cronin

Books for middle-graders:

• Catherine Called Birdy by Karen Cushman
• Hamish X and the Cheese Pirates by Sean Cullen

Books for teens:

• Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson
• The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Books for grownups:

• The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
• The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen