Empathize with stupidity and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot.
Most mainstream male fiction is littered with heroines, and female characters are basically so great, you want to fall in love with them.
It's a library, only the stupid or the evil are afraid of those
The trouble with writing fiction is that it has to make sense, whereas real life doesn't.
The bomb lives only as it is falling.
I don't really do themes. I might accidentally, but themes are an emergent phenomena of the writing of the book, of just trying to get a story out there.