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).

Jealousy is a potent emotion, of course, and Facebook, texting, email, fan Web pages... In theory, being someone like George Clooney's or Halle Berry's paramour - woo hoo - how great would that be? But wait a minute... er, no, probably kind of a nightmare.

I think that under ordinary circumstances (i.e., neither person is famous), it's already hard enough to make a long-term romantic relationship work, but add fame to the calculus.

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.

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.

I keep a couple of notebooks too into which I record ideas for story titles or characters or situations, and these notes help me quite a bit when I'm feeling at loose ends and not sure of what to work on next.