If you aren't following your bliss, there is a discrepancy in your psychology that needs to be healed, it needs to be mended.

I think that I am profoundly influenced by writers who have explored loss, and longing, and fear. Those influences have turned me into a thriller writer, essentially.

What's become more important to me over time is to not try to sell myself as someone that I'm not, and that begins with coming out of the closet and gradually it's a challenge to expand that into other areas of my life.

I think for gay people to see gay people living honestly about everything they do is really a contribution.

The sort of public sex aspects of gay male sexuality did not appeal to me. And it wasn't just a matter of being afraid of them or being too nervous to try them. I did try them and they didn't work for me, they didn't feed me spiritually, they didn't leave me gratified.

I am comfortable calling myself a writer of suspense, or a writer of thrillers; both terms are sort of interchangeable to me. I think that came from a sense of being at conflict with my true nature throughout my youth, and being afraid of discovery, and feeling as if I didn't belong.

I had seen the gay social chronicle done abundantly and done very well. And I didn't want to do any more of that myself, I wanted us to be included in the popular mainstream of entertainment fiction.