I've always been fascinated by the concept of time.

I come from a nation where fantastic fiction has a very low status, unless it fits into some very specific categories or is written by already established authors. I don't by any means try to hide what I write, but the way people think in categories here is pretty extreme: it blots out discussing the actual work on its own terms. That's made me loath to talk about my own work in terms of genre, because once you get a label, it sticks and poof go a slew of potential readers and reviewers because eww, fantasy cooties.

I have control of my own style.

If you want the reader to accept the premise as a given, then being specific is vital. This is what I'm after; I want the reader to accept the setting and the mindset of the characters, so we can get on with the story.

What I do with the story itself varies of course, but what I want to do is to present the world so that the reader can access it without tripping over the details.

My early stories revolved around reality and faith. I wrote a series of stories about the darker aspects of Christian myth: a woman who hides in the attic and watches the Apocalypse, a cult whose members preserve themselves in huge formalin tubs waiting for the Second Coming, and so on.

Some of my other stories are talked about as fantasy, some as horror, and some aren't talked about as genre at all. And the same story will be labeled differently depending on country.