I spend about eight months researching and outlining my book.

Generally my typical books have lots of twists and turns a big surprise ending and then usually another surprise at the end and ideally, as in Garden of Beasts, we get to the very end and we find at the last few pages that there's yet another surprise.

And life changes. Maybe just a little, maybe a lot. And at some point, it just isn't worth the fight to fix it.

I spend about eight months researching and outlining my book.

She believed not in divine salvation but in the proposition that we poor mortals are fully capable of saving ourselves, if conditions and inclinations are right, and the evidence of this potential is found in the smallest of gestures, like the uncertain resting of a large hand on a bony shoulder.

If you have a craftsman's command of the language and basic writing techniques you'll be able to write - as long as you know what you want to say

I was editor of my high school literary magazine and a reporter for the school newspaper.