One of my great passions is the collection of historical trivia.

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.

Once you've invested hundreds of hours in creating a coherent universe, your story's grown to around a half-million words and can't be written as anything less than a trilogy.

I write sets of books, but I've also written a lot of orphans.

I'm dense when it comes to discouragement.

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

I'm one of those writers who, when writing, believes she's god-and that she hasn't bestowed free will on any of her characters. In that sense there are no surprises in any of my books.