I love the box that such a decision puts you in, and I love the interest the reader has in seeing how you negotiate that box: that seemingly hugely narrowed set of options. I also like the way in which it reminds us that we connect to the real world. That our relationship to the world matters.

Christy has not been given a fair shake. She has not been identified as a competent premier.

I spend most of my time reading non-fiction of all sorts. Then poetry. Then fiction to blurb. Then fiction I want to read.

I think there's a playfulness and a distance to Kavalier and Clay that I don't aspire to in my stuff. Maybe I'm more old-fashioned, and less of a fabulist, in that way.

She thought she'd put up with however many years of stonewalling for a good reason, and she'd just figured out that as far as Castle Hubby went, she hadn't even crossed the moat yet.

I channel the rote and the new and unseen. My head has always been the busiest of crossroads, a festival of happy and unhappy arrivals. In the hours before daybreak when I was a boy, god sent me words as visitors.

I'll find something in what I read that snags my imagination in emotional terms; it resonates with me for reasons more complicated than just that it seems like it would make a good story.