It is likely to make us think we are not caged. We cannot feel the bars unless we push against them.

I thought a circus environment would be an interesting venue to explore, where you didn't just have one tent with three rings and a show going on but where you could explore different things in different tents.

I don't have any particular rituals, I sometimes like to write in longhand when I'm searching for ideas but I do the vast majority by typing, I can't always keep up with my thoughts longhand. I'm not a coffee shop writer because I feel obliged to order more coffee and then I end up over-caffeinated.

She turns her head, Bailey catches her eye, and she smiles at him. Not in the way that one smiles at a random member of the audience when one is in the middle of performing circus tricks with unusually talented kittens but in the way that one smiles when one recognizes someone they have not seen in some time.

The boy spends most of his time reading. And writing, of course. He copies out sections of books, writes out words and symbols he does not understand at first but that become intimately familiar beneath his ink-stained fingers, formed again and again in increasingly steady lines.

I draft quickly and then revise, a lot.

Even the air feels different on Halloween, autumn-crisp and bright.