As far as the writing goes, I started telling stories as soon as I could talk, and started writing them down as soon as I could string words together.

When I'm not at the keyboard, I'm generally reading, practicing tai chi or middle eastern dance, or cooking.

I'm mostly a novelist these days, but I have written short stories in Fantasy, Science Fiction and horror.

If I get blocked, it is generally because I don't know enough about some aspect of the story or the characters. The answer for this is generally more research, or making more background notes, so the place and person can be more fully realized inside my own mind.

Becoming a mother cannot help but change things. An author's life is reflected in their writing, whether they want it to be or not, and parenthood is one of the biggest life changes there is.

I describe my plots as follows; A character is walking down the street when all of a sudden a piano falls on them. They spend the rest of the story digging out from under that piano. How they dig, how long and how well, this all depends entirely on the character.

First and foremost, The Quiet Invasion is a first contact story. What would we do if we actually found evidence of alien life out there? It's also about politics.