I'm a science fiction and fantasy geek.

My sustenance is information. My interventions are hidden. I increase as I learn. I compute, so I am.

When I write my novels, I'm not writing them to make political points. I'm writing them because I passionately love monsters and the weird and horror stories and strange situations and surrealism, and what I want to do is communicate that. But, because I come at this with a political perspective, the world that I'm creating is embedded with many of the concerns that I have. But I never let them get in the way of the monsters.

My parents were hippies, and the story is that they went through a dictionary looking for a beautiful word to name me. They nearly called me Banyan, but flipped a few pages on and reached "China," thankfully. The other reason they liked it is that "china" is Cockney rhyming slang for "mate." People say "my old china," meaning "my old mate," because "china plate" rhymes with "mate.

I'd never been to a science-fiction convention until I became a professional writer.

The best way to write a novel is to do it behind your own back.

A trap is only a trap if you don't know about it. If you know about it, it's a challenge.