Being serious is serious business in fiction. It's commercial or hoi polloi in fiction to be funny. It's too accessible to the great unwashed.

I know what to do with my life. I just don't know what to do with this one night.

The people at the very top could fall by and grace you with their presence and give you a little largesse, and you'd be "Oh, I'm so beloved." In a way, it was kind of like flattery. The middle managers didn't quite have that cachet, but at the same time, they had to seem like they were of that caliber. So there's a little bit of loneliness at the heart of those with a little bit of power.

Some days felt longer than other days. Some days felt like two whole days. Unfortunately those days were never weekend days. Our Saturdays and Sundays passed in half the time of a normal workday. In other words, some weeks it felt like we worked ten straight days and had only one day off.

There were times where I felt I was pressing a little bit too hard with the humor, and I had to pull back, because the overriding concern of the book was to create this disease that had no cure and make you pay attention to every emotional stage of what happens.

I believe people think as a group more often than we might realize or care to admit. We like to believe that we act as individuals and nothing more, but time and again - in corporations and business, in politics and religion, in fashion and culture, and in friendships and social circles - we think and do as one.

I can't trace thematic similarities between Then We Came To The End and The Unnamed to a life event; I think it's more just a natural progression as a writer. Everything changes in the second book - tonally, character-wise, situationally - and on top of that, I think I wanted a challenge. I wanted to see if I could do it.