I went to Europe three times, I read dozens and dozens of books, I studied thousands of photos. But I always supplemented that research with imagination; research might give you detail, but imagination supplies the direction in which to apply all that detail.

Only Numbers. Pure math. You have to accustom yourself to thinking that way.

It took me about three years to write About Grace. I wasn't teaching two of those years, so I was working eight-hour days, five days a week. And it would include research and reading - it wasn't just a blank page, laying down words.

It wasn't until I was 26 or 25 when I started sending work out to magazines.

So how, children, does the brain, which lives without a spark of light, build for us a world full of light?

For me, writing historical fiction is all about finding a balance between reading, traveling, looking, imagining, and dreaming.

I never played inside as a kid - even in the rain I'd go out.