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

Octavia Butler, of course, is brilliant and disturbing.

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.

All of this got me thinking about the history of the westward expansion, and got me to wondering how the exploration of the Solar System would be changed if there were an indigenous presence out there.

I have a better internal and intuitive understanding of folklore and myth than science and technology, so in that way fantasy is easier.

So, one of the things I was doing with the aliens in The Quiet Invasion was creating that advanced society which had ideas about morality and proper use of natural resources that were radically different from ours, as the Europeans were from the American Indians.

Fantasy is, of course, booming, and I think it's beginning to stretch its range as well.