Perhaps it’s when you come to the realization that the point of life isn’t to be rich, or secure, or even to be loved - to be any of the things that people usually think is the point. The point of life is to live as deeply as possible, to experience fully. And that can be done in so many ways.

I'm used to writing fairy tales that can be somewhat dark, and the truth is that in fairy tales, romances are always problematic. They may end happily ever after, but someone's getting pushed into an oven or has blood in her shoe.

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

Art inspires me. Looking at art in a museum, listening to music, reading the works of other writers.

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.

The appeal of writing a romance was that I'd never written one before the The Thorn and The Blossom.

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.