Your first thought is often the best one. You know, the one that felt too weird or silly or stupid. Trust your imagination - it knows what it's doing.

To the goats, all people are equal, except for those who have treats.

What does seem to be a constant is that I write more emotional stories the older I get. I think a lot of that has to do with growing up in a patriarchal structure where unemotional intellect (male) is taken more seriously than delving into emotions (female), and gradually freeing myself from those expectations.

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.

Your first thought is often the best one. You know, the one that felt too weird or silly or stupid. Trust your imagination - it knows what it's doing.

I have control of my own style.

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.