She was like a butterfly, full of color and vibrancy when she chose to open her wings, yet hardly visible when she closed them.

Despair is a cavern beneath our feet and we teeter on its very brink.

And so, as generally happens, those who have most give least, and those with less somehow make shrift to share.

I can always write. Sometimes, to be sure, what I write is crap, but it's words on the page and therefore it is something to work with.

Book burnings. Always the forerunners. Heralds of the stake, the ovens, the mass graves.

Certainly I'm still mining my experiences as a journalist. I think it's no coincidence that all three of my novels basically are about how people act in a time of catastrophe. Do they go to their best self or their worst self?

Write what you know. Every guide for the aspiring author advises this. Because I live in a long-settled rural place, I know certain things. I know the feel of a newborn lamb's damp, tight-curled fleece and the sharp sound a well-bucket chain makes as it scrapes on stone. But more than these material things, I know the feelings that flourish in small communities. And I know other kinds of emotional truths that I believe apply across the centuries.