Unless the perfidious wolves have the temerity to disobey the High King's plans, we should meet Shalhassan's forces by the Latham in mid-wood with the wolves between us. If they aren't,' Diarmuid concluded, 'we blame anyone and everything except the plan.

How we remember changes how we have lived. Time runs both ways. We make stories of our lives.

There was some sadness in how that could happen, falling out of love with something that had shaped you. Or even people who had.

When I was 18 years old, in a more innocent time, my first backpacking trip through Europe, I sneaked into the Temple of Saturn in the Roman Forum after nightfall and spent several hours in there avoiding the guards patrolling.

My youngest brother had a wonderful schtick from some time in high school, through to graduating medicine. He had a card in his wallet that read, ‘If I am found with amnesia, please give me the following books to read …’ And it listed half a dozen books where he longed to recapture that first glorious sense of needing to find out ‘what happens next’ … the feeling that keeps you up half the night. The feeling that comes before the plot’s been learned.

It can be hard to write a skillfully entertaining fiction, but a great book wants to be more, and wants more from us.

After a while, you start to realize that you should write a book you would want to read. I try to write a book I would enjoy.