No one uses a ribbon typewriter any more, but your final draft is not the time to try to wring a few more sheets out of your inkjet cartridge.

My writing has to support more than my research habit, but I love to curl up with a book about some dusty corner of history.

A good short-story writer has an instinct for sketching in just enough background to ground the specific story.

I'm a writer first and an editor second... or maybe third or even fourth. Successful editing requires a very specific set of skills, and I don't claim to have all of them at my command.

I've read short stories that are as dense as a 19th century novel and novels that really are short stories filled with a lot of helium.

Ideas aren't magical; the only tricky part is holding on to one long enough to get it written down.

I think my prose reads as if English were my second language. By the time I get to the end of a paragraph, I'm dodging bullets and gasping for breath.