Uses This

1276 interviews since 2009

A picture of Delilah Dawson

Delilah Dawson

Writer

in mac, writer

Who are you, and what do you do?

I'm Delilah S. Dawson, and I'm a writer who really loves cake. My first comic is Ladycastle from BOOM! Studios. I have two stories in the Star Wars universe, The Perfect Weapon and Scorched. For novels, I've got the Blud series, the Hit series, Servants of the Storm, and the Shadow series, starting with Wake of Vultures and written as Lila Bowen. I have short stories in anthologies like Hellboy: An Assortment of Horror and Vampire the Masquerade: Endless Ages, plus a Shadowman novella called Follow Me Boy. I also teach writing classes online for LitReactor.

I once wrote an article about writing your first sex scene that coined the term "humpalicious", went viral, and got picked up by Cosmo.

What hardware do you use?

I write on a 2014 13" MacBook Air. I read e-books and galleys using the Kindle and B&N apps on an aged iPad Mini. My phone is a Samsung Go Prime that I bought refurbished for $50 in January because I can't be trusted with nice things. I already dropped it in a toilet at a con. It recovered.

A great travel bag is really important for me, so I love my Osprey Cyber for its padded laptop sleeve, cord compartment, and ability to get me through a 3-day trip with no checked bags. I tuck my ApenBird hip bag in my carryon for cons and hands-free walkin'. My favorite earbuds and headphones are from UrbanEars. For note taking, I keep a cheap mini notebook in my purse, one in my car, and a stack of index cards at my kitchen table, where I work all day. I battle SAD, so I start each morning with a SAD light and drink Crio Bru instead of coffee.

And if we're talking about travel, I live off Kind bars since I can't eat gluten anymore, take packets of Emergen-C and Natural Calm, and go to sleep with an eye bra and some Unisom tablets while watching (or listening to, really) Netflix. Current favorite sleeping show: Bob's Burgers.

And what software?

I do all my writing on OpenOffice (because it's free!). Each project has a playlist on my Spotify channel, and I pay for Spotify Premium so I can take my playlists with me anywhere, without ads. I keep a tab for Thesaurus.com open constantly and watch movies on Netflix in the background while I write, especially action movies that feature Vikings, centurions, or other dirt-spackled people fighting to the death. I pretty much live on Twitter and have an Instagram, although my author Facebook page has been rendered useless by their usual skullduggery. Oh! And I use PicMonkey for making graphics and editing photos.

What would be your dream setup?

I have everything I need, although I would love to get rid of the guilt I feel every time a MacBook Air dies and I have to go plunk down cash for a new one. I abuse them horribly. So a MacBook Air that would live forever while being used 16 hours a day and not burning my thighs would be fabulous.

Ultimately, my dream setup would be to get to work from interesting places all around the world, especially near the ocean. I try to find fun experiences everywhere I go - trapeze lessons in DC, shows in NYC, surfing class in Kauai, ziplining over Florida swamps, driving through the Arizona desert under the full moon. As long as I have my laptop and wifi, I can get my work done.

Also, I would like a new gallbladder and a functional thyroid gland so I could go back to eating gluten and fat and coffee and red wine like a normal person.