Google can bring you back 100,000 answers. A librarian can bring you back the right one.

But how can you walk away from something and still come back to it?

Have you ever spent days and days and days making up flavors of ice cream that no one's ever eaten before? Like chicken and telepone ice cream? Green mouse ice cream was the worst. I didn't like that at all.

As a kid I would get my parents to drop me off at my local library on their way to work during the summer holidays and I would walk home at night. For several years I read the children's library until I finished the children's library. Then I moved into the adult library and slowly worked my way through them.

The best thing about writing fiction is that moment where the story catches fire and comes to life on the page, and suddenly it all makes sense and you know what it's about and why you're doing it and what these people are saying and doing, and you get to feel like both the creator and the audience. Everything is suddenly both obvious and surprising ("but of course that's why he was doing that, and that means that...") and it's magic and wonderful and strange.

I started out writing much more science fictiony stuff and writing about science fiction.

Continuity isn't actually something that I ever worry about. You use it where you need to, and you don't use it where you don't need to.