There are some writers I think who love to go around and visit bookstores and just interact.

My first job out of college was as an editorial assistant in a New York publishing house. Being an editorial assistant is the purgatory would-be editors must endure before they can ascend the ladder and begin acquiring books on their own. I spent a year filing paperwork, writing copy, and typing rejection letters.

I can't listen to music while writing - any such distraction would have dreadful consequences.

For me, writing never gets easier. It's always hard work. It doesn't matter how many words you wrote the day before, or how many novels you've completed in the last decade: every day you start fresh again with that same blank page, or that same blank screen.

Writing on your own is, in a way, a very lonely profession. There's no one there to help you.

I try to write about things, places, events, and phenomena I know about personally. That helps make the novels more genuine.

The simplest explanation is most often the correct one.