I have this theory that anything that happens to you that leaves you alive and intact can be used somewhere in your writing.

The essentials are to learn to shape God with forethought, care, and work; to educate and benefit their community, their families and themselves; and to contribute to the fulfillment of the Destiny.

And by the way, I wanted to point out that Kindred is not science fiction. You'll note there's no science in it. It's a kind of grim fantasy.

I began reading science fiction before I was 12 and started writing science fiction around the same time.

You don't start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it's good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it. That's why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence.

I'm a fifty-three-year-old writer who can remember being a ten-year-old writer and who expects someday to be an eighty-year-old writer.

No one was going to stop me from writing and no one had to really guide me towards science fiction. It was natural, really, that I would take that interest.