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

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.

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.

But things change, of course, and so do the ways in which people see themselves.

Of all the virtues, discretion began to seem the most rewarding: it kept people guessing and sometimes, by default, admiring.

Now is almost always the better choice. You never know about later.

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.