Most inexperienced cooks believe, mistakenly, that a fine cake is less challenging to produce than a fine souffle or mousse. I know, however, that a good cake is like a good marriage: from the outside, it looks ordinary, sometimes unremarkable, yet cut into it, taste it, and you know that it is nothing of the sort. It is the sublime result oflong and patient experience, a confection whose success relies on a profound understanding of compatibilities and tastes; on a respect for measurement, balance, chemistry and heat; on a history of countless errors overcome.

Here we are - despite the delays, the confusion, and the shadows en route - at last, or for the moment, where we always intended to be.

There you are, diligently swimming a straight line, minding the form of your strokes, when you look up and see, always a shock, the currents you can't even feel have pulled you off course.

It's odd to spend your vacation with someone else's music especially when you're alone. You're free to let loose, unobserved, but someone else has chosen the words you belt out in private, the rythms you can dance to like a fool.

I love meeting booksellers and readers and hearing how they've read and received my stories. Often I'm surprised by which characters they've loved best, what scenes have stayed with them, what connections they've felt between my characters' lives and theirs.

Mind who you love. For that matter, mind how you are loved.

I see life as increasingly complex, vivid, colorful, crazy, chaotic. That's the world I write about...the world I live in.