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.

It's appropriate to have magic in a love story, because magic is a sort of metaphor for what love feels like? When we fall in love, the world feels magical to us. It becomes an enchanted place.

So much work went into this book [ "The Thorn & The Blossom"] - you can probably tell from looking at the art and overall design.

Writers: believe! And go do the work . . .

If you look at the natural world, really look at it, it's always magical.

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.

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.