Gene police! You! Out of the pool, now!

Writing novels takes up about 100% of my available working time.

I'm an atheist .I was raised in British reform Judaism, which is not like American reform Judaism, much less any other strain of organised religion. So: no cults here.

Time is a corrosive fluid, dissolving motivation, destroying novelty, and leaching the joy from life.

What I'm hoping for is something that goes much, much further than the conservative enablers of dog-eat-dog capitalism putting on a puppet show of cleaning house. But that's probably not going to happen just yet.

I have no policy, for or against: only a personal style. Which is to say, I use them when I think it's appropriate to; for example, an internal monologue by a locquacious and verbose narrator is more likely to be larded with adverbs than an exchange of instant messages between cops at a crime scene.

I suspect losing paper maps but gaining GPS and online maps is a similar step function: maps still exist, but they're vastly more useful, not to say permanently up to date, in their new form. Again, I won't be shedding any tears, but I'll keep a paper road atlas in the back of my car for another few years, I think, Just In Case.