I would tell myself to get more sleep! Believe it or not, I wrote the book while finishing my PhD in English literature. It was wonderful to get away from doing literary scholarship by writing this mythical love story. I think so much of my own love for books and scholarship comes through in The Thorn and the Blossom.

Nature inspires me continually. Today, I can look out my window and see the entire world covered with snow. It's like Narnia under the White Witch.

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.

I think part of my purpose in this life is to talk about magic, and to make it.

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

Writing two stories [in the Thorn and the Blossom] about the same set of events that were complete stories in themselves, but also added up to a larger story. As I was writing them, I kept going back and forth, because something would happen in one story that would have to be reflected in the other story. And yet the same event would also have to be perceived in different ways by Brendan and Evelyn, because they are different people with their own interpretations.

What writers do - everything comes from inside, from experiences of the world that we have digested. And then we turn it into silk, or stories.