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.

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

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.

For me, writing a short story is much, much harder than writing a novel.

I'm dense when it comes to discouragement.

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.

When I have an idea, it goes from vague, cloudy notion to 100,000 words in a heartbeat.