Writing grew out of the pleasure of escape. My novels are very much outside of my personal experience. That is why I love writing fiction. It allows me to leave my existence and inhabit other lives.

I started listening to the Cure around the time I discovered Joy Division and, like Joy Division, they have shaped my taste in all sorts of dark and dreary ways.

I don't think there are actually any theologians practicing angelology or studying angels anymore, but it's definitely in a lot of religious literature. It's still out there, and people are still interested. Even in the more secular way, books about angels are everywhere.

In terms of style, I think the memoirist should have a novelist's skill and all the elements of a novelist's toolbox. When I read a memoir, I want to really, deeply experience what the author experienced. I want to see the characters and hear the way they speak and understand how they think. And so in that way, writing a memoir feels similar to writing a novel.

Since the Middle Ages, people have been writing about angels. Angelology was actually at one point a scholastic discipline.

Maybe that is what marriage is: Two people creating a cult together.

The most obvious difference between writing novels and memoirs is that my memoirs are true stories, and explore certain experiences I've lived, and thus operate within the boundaries of memory and fact.