One of the traps or the pitfalls of writing a trilogy - or a triptych, or whatever term you want to use - is that the second book can be a long second act to get you from book one to book three, which borrows all of its energy from the first book.

The military was all about hierarchies, who urinated highest on the hydrant

I'm still an English professor at Rice University here in Houston. They've been very generous in letting me on a very long leash to just work on 'The Passage' and its sequels.

This ravishing world. This achingly bittersweet, ravishing world.

Miles away from everthing and everyone I've ever known or loved. I feel as if I've entered a new era of my life. What strange places our lives carry us to.

One of the great themes in American literature is the individual's confrontation with the vast open spaces of the continent.

A thousand recollected lives were passing through her, a thousand stories - of love and work, of parents and children, of duty and joy and grief. Beds slept in and meals eaten, and the bliss and pain of the body, and a view of summer leaves from a window on a morning it had rained; the nights of loneliness and the nights of love, the soul in it's body keeping always longing to be known.