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

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

The funny thing about writing is I think a lot of people assume that you're sitting in a garret with a quill pen for hour after hour.

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.

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.

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.