Handler lives in San Francisco, California, but I was fortunate enough to steal a few minutes with him before his sold-out appearance at the Paramount Theater in Austin, Texas, which took place in conjunction with the 2005 Texas Book Festival.
About.com: Is it true that you started writing the Lemony Snicket books at the suggestion of your editor, after you published "The Basic Eight," a book that features kids as the main characters?
Lemony Snicket: She was not my editor of "The Basic Eight," but she is an editor at a children's publishing house. She asked me if I might be interested in writing for children and I said no, I thought that would be a terrible idea, that the sort of stuff I would come up with would be completely inappropriate at a children's publishing house. And then that night I had an idea, and so rather than doing the professional thing, which probably all of your readers do, I called this woman up and said, let's meet at a bar because I have this idea, and I'll tell it to you and you can tell me it's a lousy idea, and we'll agree that it's a terrible idea for me to write for children, but at least we'll be at a bar, and it will be less awkward and the whole evening won't be a complete waste.
Instead she said she liked the idea, which sort of panicked me because I thought it meant that she was a lightweight, and I thought, now she's going to have to call me up the next morning and say, now that I'm stone cold sober, I don't know what I was thinking. I can see that this is a terrible idea. And she called the next morning and said she still liked the idea, why don't you write it down.
AC: You play your accordion during your performances. How do you warm up? Do you practice on a daily basis, weekly?
LS: In my regular life I practice very little. On tour, there's a new accordion for me rented in each location. I once had an accordion damaged on an airplane and after frantically trying to find an accordion, I just said, let's try to find an accordion in each city, so I end up trying out different accordions of various styles and quality.
AC: How are you finding the one in Austin?
LS: Beautiful. It's an antique instrument with brand new straps, which is good because the straps are leather and if they're old they might snap in the middle of a performance, which, in fact, has happened to me. But this is not a state where I expected to have a hard time finding an accordion, and Texas has not disappointed.
