The correlations between real life experience and the storylines in novels are never as direct or simple as they might seem.

You have to find a way of shutting the future out and focusing on the writing. One of the problems I'll have with writing my second book is getting back into a situation where I think about the words on the page rather than the publishing industry, or success, or any kind of readership I may now have. I'll have to do what writers do, which is focus on the story and nothing else.

I try to find the beauty in things. On dark days, I sit in my armchair looking at clouds and I am awed at how rain is made.

All of us, writers and non-writers alike, have incredible well-springs of personal experience and history. And we also have imagination - which I think is a kind of human miracle.

There is a forgotten black middle class in America - a group which is huge but underrepresented in the media and in art. It's difficult to talk about these things, because it forces one to talk in generalities, but that's my view. I do think the idea of a blanket class for black people is unfortunately still present.

I'm wary of being put in boxes. But at the same time, it's important that I embrace my identity as a writer who happens to be gay, and in my own way I do that.

I think that if you just write your characters you end up with something that people can access.