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

When we tell stories about things that are important - love, fear, beauty - we change the way people think about the world. Writers are, or should be, truth-tellers even when the stories themselves are fantasy.

I've heard some readers saying they wished the story was longer, and I completely understand that desire - we all like to sink into a nice, long novel.

I put that part of myself into both Brendan and Evelyn [from The Thorn and the Blossom] - as well as some of my own anxieties about the academic life!

The book[ The Thorn and The Blossom] is a love story about two people, Brendan and Evelyn, who meet in a small town in Cornwall where Evelyn has gone on vacation and Brendan is working in his father's bookstore. The story is told from both perspectives, Brendan's and Evelyn's.

Delia Sherman once told me that you never learn to write a story. You only learn to write the story you are currently writing. You have to learn how to write the next story all over again. And she's absolutely right.

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.