For my own family, I would always choose the makeshift, surrogate family formed by various characters unrelated by blood.

I don't want to say I hear voices; well, actually I do hear voices, but I don't think it's supernatural. I think it's just that when characters are given enough texture and backbone, then lo and behold, they stand on their own.

If I waited till I felt like writing, I'd never write at all.

I expect that any day now, I will have said all I have to say; I'll have used up all my characters, and then I'll be free to get on with my real life.

Time, in general, has always been a central obsession of mine - what it does to people, how it can constitute a plot all on its own. So naturally, I am interested in old age.

I spend about a year between novels

Women were the ones that held the reins, it emerged.