In the Forest of Forgetting do you remember any romances? All the relationships in those stories are dark and twisted - people fall in love, but they really shouldn't have. There's even a story about a marriage, but it focuses on a woman who marries a bear!

The editor, Stephen Segal, actually called me with the idea of creating an accordion book [ "The Thorn & The Blossom"], and asked if I could write a story for it. I was so intrigued! I immediately knew that it had to be a love story told from the points of view of the two main characters. Right away, I started working on a proposal. And once I had my main characters, Brendan and Evelyn, it was as though they started telling me their stories.

The only thing worth thinking about, when I write a story, is whether I like it, whether I want to write it, whether it excites me.

It's very difficult to put in the work unless you believe that what you're doing is significant in some way.

It happened the way I come up with any story, which is that I took elements of my own life and put them into the story, but in a very mixed-up way.

That sort of effort has to come not only from the writer but also from a really innovative publisher like Quirk.

The Thorn and the Blossom isn't just a love story. It's about two people who decide what they actually want to do artistically, despite discouragement. In some ways, that's just as important as the romance.