You're thinking about the continuum of life as you load the washing machine or scoop out the litter box.blue-girl-larger Or maybe that's just me. That seems to be an endlessly challenging and interesting way to live.

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.

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.

I've always gone with Kafka's model of establishing the world from the first line, as in Kafka's famous line from Metamorphosis, "Gregor Samsa woke up from uneasy dreams to find himself transformed into a gigantic insect" (or beetle or cockroach, depending on the translation). I have to have that first line before I can go further.

I've realized that with each novel I seem to set out a kind of puzzle for myself. And I am never sure in the process of writing a first draft how it's all going to turn out.

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.

Fundamentally I think we all write the kinds of work we'd most like to read. Or we try to.