You can have an interesting story about a person living an interesting life. And if it's done well, that is just as engaging as the end of the world. A million people dying - we can't process. One person, we can process.

After two years of sending out query letters and failing to get an agent, I made friends with an author, who was nice enough to introduce me to his agent. That got my foot in the door.

I'm not a stereotypical professor type. I don't smoke a pipe and wear a tweedy jacket. I'm more like a student who stayed at the university for so long that they gave him a job to keep him out of trouble.

Writing a good query letter has very little to do with writing a good novel. But if you can't write the one, it makes it really hard to get the other published.

Bones mend. Regret stays with you forever.

Speculative fiction is where my heart lies. It's what I read growing up, and it's what I read as an adult.

How odd to watch a mortal kindle / Then to dwindle day by day / Knowing their bright souls are tinder / And the wind will have its way