I'm always interested in a claustrophobic situation where people might be powerless to do things.

Usually, the creating of the book happens while I'm writing the book. I start with Chapter One, with a few ideas and a handful of characters, and the book grows from there.

I didn't major in anthropology in college, but I do feel I had an education in different cultures very early on. My parents divorced when I was eleven, and my father immediately married a woman with three children and was with her for five years. When they got divorced, he immediately married a woman with four children. In the meantime, my mother married a man who had seven children. So I was going from one family to another between the ages of eleven and eighteen.

Anthropological fieldwork is so much like writing a novel. You don't know what the hell is going on.

I have three stepfamilies as well as my family of origin. I've had to adjust to them and also go back and forth among them. I became an observer of human nature because when you are in those situations you have to be.

I love reading fiction about people who are connecting intellectually. I find that exhilarating.

I'm very interested in the way people interact emotionally.