Now that The Thorn and the Blossom has come out and I'm done with my doctoral degree (yes, I'm finally Dr. Goss), I'm turning to longer projects.

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 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!

My uncommon sense told me to write this book [Turn and blossom], even though I was in the middle of making final revisions to my dissertation! Common sense would have said, finish the dissertation and get a good, solid academic position. But instead, I got to do something that no one else has done, because I don't think anyone has written a book quite like this one. And look at how beautiful it is!

The Thorn and The Blossom can be read from either side - you can choose whether to read it from Brendan's or Evelyn's perspective first, and each one will give you a different sense of what happens in the story.

The book itself [The Thorn and The Blossom] is bound accordion-style: it has no spine, so it can open in either direction, and it's in a slipcase.

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.