My grandparents, like many genocide survivors, took most of their stories to their graves.

The honest answer is more complex. On some level I was sent. Or inspired. Or called. But my calling, such as it was, wasn't a single booming invitation from above (really, is it ever?).

The reality is that most of North America knows next to nothing of the 20th centurys first genocide - the systematic slaughter of 1.5 million Armenians in the First World War.

We may talk a good game and write even better ones, but we never outgrow those small wounded things we were when we were five and six and seven.

But it's funny how the memory works and how sometimes we just belive whatever we want.

When it seems you have nothing at all to live for, death is not especially frightening.

As a novelist, there are three phone calls you never expect to receive in your lifetime because if you waited for them you would grow despairing - one calling from Stockholm with a Swedish accent, one from the NBA, and one from Oprah Winfrey.