All true readers have a book, a moment when real life is never going to be able to compete with fiction again.

It's a funny thing, character, the way it brands people as they age, rising from within to leave its scar.

But happiness ... happiness grows at our own firesides," she said. "It is not to be picked in strangers' gardens." ~ The House at Riverton

Ah, well. Life's too short for moderation, wouldn't you say?

Wars make history seem deceptively simple. They provide clear turning points, easy distinctions.: before and after, winner and loser, right and wrong. True history, the past, is not like that. It isn't flat or linear. It has no outline. It is slippery, like liquid; infinite and unknowable, like space. And it is changeable: just when you think you see a pattern, perspective shifts, an alternate version is proffered, a long-forgotten memory resurfaces.

I'd pretty much given up hope of being published, so I just wrote the book I wanted to read.

Doors lead to things and I've never met one I haven't wanted to open.