dSavannah note: Some of you who are newer readers of my blog may not know that I previously used my blog to promote my art and writing, and other artists and writers, specifically in my interview series called The Questions. Since it’s been quite some time, I want to go through all of those previous posts, contact their subjects, and update them with current info, re-publishing them as a #ThrowBackThursday. (I also plan to create a new series of The Questions for my fellow #ChronicIllnessBloggers and disabled creators.)
Sadly, it will take me a long time to do this: I first emailed myself last JUNE to start this updating project, and I first contacted Becky this past March, and am finally just now updating this post. Le Sigh, as I am prone to say.
This post was originally published September 27, 2012, and updated June 17, 2021.
R. J. Davnall (or Dr. Becky Davnall, as some know her), hails from Liverpool. And not Liverpool, New York. Liverpool, United Kingdom. Our cousins across the pond.
When I first published this post, she was a PhD student, working on a thesis about something that my feeble mind couldn’t comprehend then, and definitely can’t comprehend now.
But since Becky is super-cool, and funny, her posts regarding it included comments like “Got the word ‘gobbledegook’ into my thesis. It’s another one crossed off the list!” and “Actually doing proper, intellectually-respectable research. I can tell, because I’m reading about something called ‘graph structuralism’. WHHHYYYYYYY?!?!?! cries.”
I just wish I’d included the word ‘gobbledegook’ in my thesis. Oh well.
She now has her PhD and lectures at a university, and! her debut novel, Heaven Can Wait, was just released!!! Woot! (So, maybe not so terrible that I took so long to update this post.)
Becky is also very modest; in her former pinned tweet regarding her book launch, she wrote: “If you don’t need any more convincing that I’m brilliant and just want to buy my book, check out [the description]”:
In the small hours of the morning after my death, I awoke on a sandbar in the Cohl Delta with a Man Who Wasn’t There waiting for me.
Tom never expected to die young; even less did he expect the Men Who Weren’t There to be waiting for him on his death. Who are these Men? And what is the Non-Agency they work for? More importantly, is there any way Tom can make sure that he doesn’t end up in Heaven?
Doesn’t that sound cool????!??!? Please make Becky feel at home as she (re)answers The Questions.
The Questions
5. What skill(s) do you wish you’d learned as a kid?
The ability to shut up when I don’t know what I’m talking about. I still have problems with that to this day (though it’s turned out to be a surprisingly useful flaw when it comes to teaching seminars at university).
dSavannah note: I have to say, being able to sound like you know what you’re talking about when you haven’t a clue came in handy in all of my careers, teaching at university being one of them. And it’s pretty much the definition of ‘public relations’. 😉
6. What do you want on your tombstone?
“Oh, laugh it off. I wasn’t that big a deal anyway.” (Assuming, at least, that I end up a big enough deal for this to be ironic rather than tragic…)
9. What is a guilty pleasure?
Motorsport. As an ecologically conscious liberal, I should be dead set against it, but I love motorsport at all levels from semi-amateur up. I still haven’t completely given up the childhood dream of being a racing car driver.
(dSavannah note: I too would adore being a race car driver. I used to love driving super fast and blasting loud music. These days, I would love to be able to drive at all.)
19. What is one of your pet peeves?
People not answering emails and messages promptly. I’m a child of the modern age (by which I mean I’m horrendously impatient). I get very neurotic very quickly if I send someone an email and don’t get a reply within a couple of hours. One disadvantage of being imaginative is that it becomes very easy to think of obscure ways in which you might have offended someone to the point that they stop speaking to you…
(dSavannah note: I’m afraid I share this trait… even though I grew up waiting weeks and weeks to get a letter from someone. In the mail. Oh, the horror! And even though now it takes me eons to answer messages…)
23. Where is your heart home and why?
At the moment? I’m still looking for it!
24. If you could go back and give your 13-year-old self a piece of advice, what would it be?
“Look, I know we feel clever and all, but sometimes it is actually worth listening to people older and wiser than us. Me included, squirt.”
24a. What about your 20-year-old self?
“For what it’s worth, the worst of it is now over.”
30. What’s the most expensive crap you own that you can’t live without?
I don’t know if I’d call it crap, but the most expensive single thing I own is my digital piano, and I suspect I’d go crazy in a matter of days if it broke or was stolen. Piano music and pianos have been a part of my life as long as I can remember, and I’ve been playing piano for almost three quarters of the time I’ve been alive.
About R. J.:
Supposedly, this is Becky. Get the “possible alien” comment now?
R. J. Davnall is a brightly-plumed, semi-nocturnal cryptid native to northwestern England. She has been making up stories, including her own, all her life, and thus probably shouldn’t be trusted to write her own bio. When disguised as a human, she is a Lecturer in Philosophy and Game Design Studies, and a member of the Olaf Stapledon Centre for Speculative Futures, at the University of Liverpool.
dSavannah note: For the record, I am not 100% certain that Becky is actually a human. I mean, the only photos she posts of herself are of blue alien-like beings, like this one <—————–. She once posted a pic of a human with long hair in an online writers’ group, but later claimed it was someone else. (She also had antenna back then, but apparently they are now covered by hair.)
What she creates (in her words):
These days, anything that takes my fancy. My fiction is available at Smashwords and sometimes also at itch.io, and my debut novel Heaven Can Wait is out now from Ellipsis Imprints. I also stream regularly at twitch.tv/eatthepen and am starting to get back into making music which will hopefully be appearing online soon.
dSavannah notes: You can watch the launch party for Heaven Can Wait on YouTube (with timestamps and everything).
Check out her online author card.
Purchase the ebook on Amazon US [affiliate link], Amazon UK, or Smashwords.
Purchase a paperback on Amazon US [affiliate link], Amazon UK, Bookshop [affiliate link], Book Depository, or Blackwells.
Becky told me she lives on Twitter. Which I think is true, as I’ve rarely had to wait longer than 60 seconds to a reply to a query. So if you want to say “hi” …
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