What I do not want to write is didactic political tracts.

Moon is also a naive native girl when she sets out for Carbuncle.

The mers were also designed to reproduce only at long intervals, in order to maintain the natural balance of the environment in which they were placed.

Beyond that, I seem to be compelled to write science fiction, rather than fantasy or mysteries or some other genre more likely to climb onto bestseller lists even though I enjoy reading a wide variety of literature, both fiction and nonfiction.

And so The Snow Queen also became a story about the need to seek equilibrium, in our own lives, with the natural world, even within the universe at large.

Here was a fragment of Goddess myth that, through all its permutations, had somehow escaped being turned on its head. It was the perfect springboard for the sort of novel I wanted to write.

Don't worry. You're safe now. You've got nothing left to steal.