Men might be chastised for being promiscuous, but I think they're more likely to be given a pass, due to a "men will be men" attitude that still prevails in the Western world. They don't usually experience anything like the virulent shaming and verbal abuse that women who are sexually adventurous are sometimes prone to experiencing.

One thing the passage of time has shown me is that you never know how you'll behave in a situation until you're in that situation yourself.

Tangentially, Americans, despite many of us being prone to sometimes-eyebrow-raising disclosures about our private lives on social media, still retain what I think of as reactionary views about sexuality and intimacy.

Mostly what ends up inspiring me and affecting my work are books by authors that I love.

Thirty years ago, the Pandora's box of the Internet wasn't yet a fact of life, and celebrities inhabited a more remote, hard-to-reach plane.

The effects of fame on the not-famous people who are close to a celebrity - this is definitely a topic that continues to interest me.

Sometimes I do work on a longer manuscript in tandem with one or two shorter pieces - whether it's a short story or an essay (though I don't write many of the latter).