I think it's still difficult to write about motherhood and anxiety, that talking about not wanting to be a mother or feeling ambivalent about motherhood makes people uneasy. The ambivalent mother is certainly much more interesting.

Having a magical element in a realistic setting without explanation seems to me to be the hallmark of fairy tales, which present us with a kind of metaphorical look at some aspect of our lives.

My mom was a big Elvis fan and a general pop culture buff, and so I grew up in a house filled with what were then called "movie magazines,"Before Elvis when Rhona Barrett wrote her column about the stars. And so it seeped in.

When a certain show or film or celebrity captures the imagination of the masses that has a good deal to say about us, I think, and what is happening in our collective psyche.

I could have a lot of fun with Michael Jackson, I'm sure.

I think there's a fine line between being so obtuse that you lose the reader completely, which is the intention for some writers, though it isn't mine. I work hard at grounding the world as much as possible in the world we do recognize.

Usually at the core of fiction that has some element of the absurd there tends to be an examination of some societal ills that we should talk about more than we do. And it's funny, of course, so we have that release valve with absurdism. It offers us a safe way to explore difficult subject matter.