My books usually end where they began. I try to bring characters back to a point that is familiar but different because of the growth that they have gone through.

I do have a little bit more confidence in - or at least familiarity with - my process. For example, when it feels like it's going badly or that I'm lost, I know I'll eventually find my way because I've been through it before. But writing itself is still hard.

It's as if once you hit high school, you're programmed, like a robot, to be an asshole to your parents.

Forgetting isn't enough. You can paddle away from the memories and think they are gone. But they will keep floating back, again and again and agian. They circle you, like sharks. Until, unless, something, someone? Can do more than just cover the wound.

My parents met in music school and my father was a music professor and conductor. Growing up, we always had classical and contemporary music playing. There was a lot of Mozart and the Beatles.

It's a jagged thing in my throat, how much I miss her.

I have no desire to go back to San Francisco.