I think that novels are one of the best means that we have to communicate both with the past and with the future.

There are as many different ways to write a novel as there are varieties of human consciousness, so I am totally delighted if people want to use words that come from genres to describe how this book functions because those words are accurate.

I feel that there is an alternate ending that leaps off too far into fantasy and there is an alternate ending that leaps off too far into pessimism, but that, in fact, the novel as it has developed should, if it's functioning correctly, have equipped you as the reader to make your own decision about where you want to go with that, about where you're going to fall on that continuum. So, the novel is taking you directly up to the point that you have to choose, and it's letting you do that.

Teaching is enormously satisfying because I'm constantly learning more. Just constantly being exposed to new voices and new life experiences and new worldviews and new structural dilemmas and new characters - it's really exciting for me.

One of the things that's exciting for me about this novel is that, to me, Brookland and The Testament of Yves Gundron were both, in certain regards, crypto-steampunk. They're both books that are interested in an alternate technological past that in fact didn't historically come to pass. If you were to ask me what my novels were about, I would say, well, these are novels about technology and how we relate to technology and what technology means.

A novel is a way to rethink and rewrite and re-envision the past, and also a way to speak to people who haven't been born yet about what we think about right now.

It's very difficult, I think for most writers, to carve out the time and the kind of imaginative space to do the writing that you really want to do and also to be an active, engaged, compassionate, giving human being in the world, to the people around you and to your broader community.