Ten random facts about me

Will have this on Facebook as well, but here it is for the blog readers and followers.

1. I am a cockroach-phobe, so much so that it took me 20 years to finally watch the "They're Creeping Up On You" segment in the movie Creepshow.
2. I have eaten alligator, snails, squirrel, frog legs, rattlesnake, and a fried shrimp head (not all in the same meal).
3. The first writer I ever met was Leonard Wibberley, author of The Mouse That Roared, among other works. His wife was the principal of my elementary school. I was 8 years old so details are fuzzy, but I remember him looking a good deal like Papa Hemingway, and I remember being amazed at actually meeting a real writer. 
4. My favorite time of year is Christmas.
5. I prefer dark chocolate to milk chocolate. Don't even bring up white chocolate; to me it tastes like wax.
6. When I need to recharge, I go to the beach. Any type of beach, any season. As long as I'm near the ocean, I'm good. In my fiction you'll notice a lot of character moments at beaches.
7. I'm a latecomer to book series. Didn't read Harry Potter or A Song of Ice and Fire until their fourth books were published. Didn't read the Hunger Games books until long after Mockingjay was published.
8. I sort of miss the days when The Wizard of Oz showing on TV was a once-a-year special event.
9. Speaking of The Wizard of Oz, it wasn't until embarrassingly recently that I figured out how they did the Horse of a Different Color trick. Yes, I'm slow.
10. The last book to provoke an audible non-laughter response from me was Cormac McCarthy's The Crossing (when you find out how the old blind man became blind).