It's a brooding melancholy that haunts me.

I grew up in Seattle, but I always knew I wanted to leave.

I was aware that there is an expectation that writers inevitably falter at this stage, that they fail to live up to the promise of their first successful book, that the next book never pleases the way the prior one did. It simply increased my sense of being challenged.

My father is a practicing criminal law attorney in the Seattle area.

Time made me change. I gradually woke up to the realization that this is who I am, an author, a public figure, and I couldn't just hide in my study, tapping away at the keyboard and pretend that I didn't have a role to play beyond stringing words together.

I'm interested in themes that endure from generation to generation.

Hemingway said the only way to write about a place is to leave it.