I really don't feel that writing is therapy.

I think we think that parenthood is confined to the country of mothers, but I think a lot of the men I've spoken to and the men who have read my books - I've been surprised by this actually - have a fierce attachment to being parents and to being fathers. And just as we, a lot of women I know, want this, men too want to pass down what they have to pass down.

I wanted a baby of color, to be honest, because I wasn't attached to the idea that I look like the biological mother. I liked the idea of the adoption being clear; it was and is not something I am interested in hiding.

I think publishing's strength is also its weakness. It's got such a rich and celebrated history as an industry. For the most part, publishing people are incredibly creative, business is done based on the strength of relationships, and the product being peddled is books.

It would be a lie to say that people are coming to adoption with joy at all times. Hope, perhaps, but it would be disingenuous to say that every part coming to an adoption isn't seriously grieving.

Publishing in a way doesn't have a lot to do with writing, and writing doesn't have a lot to do with publishing.

I know publishing now more as an author than with occasional peaks inside those elite offices than as an industry insider. It was difficult publishing a novel the first time around, while working behind the scenes, knowing all that has to happen to make a book a success and to still make the leap as an author.