A:  I find this sort of thing unnecessary and irrelevant.  It's like that scene from "Wizard of Oz," when the wizard admonishes Dorothy and company, "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!"  It's the illusion--in this case, the story--that matters.  What difference does it make if an author is male or female, young or old, or for that matter, a Caucasian human or a sentient dolphin?  

To me, it's also a privacy issue, and if you see me at a convention or book signing and attempt to take my picture, I'll politely (usually) request that you don't.  If a person wants to pose for photos, I say grin and go for it, but I believe that no one has a right to create or disseminate an image of another person without his or her express consent. 

Okay, that's how things go in my Ideal World, but it's getting harder to get people on board with my Wizard of Oz argument. Everyone expects authors to have photos, and the effort of explaining why I don't is getting to be more trouble than it's worth. Worse, some people regard this particular phobia as prima donna behavior -- one guy responded to my request with a snotty,  "Well, I suppose everyone needs an affectation or two ...."  

So what with one thing and another, I gave up and had a photo done for Dave Gross, formerly the editor of Star Wars Insider magazine, when I was writing Star Wars short stories. It's pretty dreadful, and one of these days I'll get around to replacing it.  

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