I am a tragically bad artist.

I knew the basic outline of the novel [The Dissemblers] and would write whatever scene of the book I felt particularly excited about at the time.

I was loosely aware that most of my characters were fundamentally selfish people, but I didn't intentionally make that a theme.

When Ivy [Wilkes] begins her work in forgery, she doesn't yet know the toll that it will take on her own original work. She even thinks it might be a way to find inspiration. By the time she realizes that she has lost her own voice, she is thoroughly entangled in the forgery mess.

I find that time constraints actually make me more productive, and "real world" experiences provide a lot of inspiration to write.

When I finished the book [The Dissemblers], I sent it to one billion agents, and got one billion rejections.

I was envious of [Vincent] Van Gogh because I could never make a painting that beautiful! (Ridiculous, I know.) That was when the character of Ivy [Wilkes] began to take shape for me.