I don't know about ground rules; but I create the world that arrives with the characters or situation or voice in my head that instigates the piece, whatever form it may take.

My fondness for extended monologue might have been encouraged by two decades of writing stage and radio dramas.

Each piece of writing I undertake, whether a story, novel, play, or poem, begins with an image.

For me, fiction's great gift - to writer and reader, alike - is freedom.

I had hoped to be a poet, and for a long time I tried to write poetry. My first published pieces were poems.

Metaphysics notwithstanding, I also insert myself in my fictions for no loftier purpose than to give me pleasure: to see myself performing onstage.

I do believe we are actors in our own dramas, which, moment by moment, we ourselves write; that we are characters in our own fictions or those devised for us by someone or something else.