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

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

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'm dense when it comes to discouragement.

The money can be decent, but I really don't recommend the work-for-hire route as an entry into publishing. Too many things can go wrong.

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.

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.