The format of the book was the idea of my wonderful editor, Stephen Segal. Stephen and I had worked together before, on projects for the Interstitial Arts Foundation, and when he got the idea for an accordion-style book, he called and asked if I could write the story for it. I told him that I would love to try! And I knew it had to be a love story, because that's the sort of story you really want to hear from both perspectives. I mean, imagine if Pride and Prejudice were told from Darcy's perspective as well as Elizabeth's. It would be quite a different story!

I loved writing something people usually have - miscommunication, for example. Now that I've written a romance, I'm sure I'll write more: it's fascinating to put people together and see what happens, how they fall in love and what that means in their lives.

I'm working on a poetry collection for Papaveria Press . It fills me with trepidation - poetry is something I'm much more self-conscious about than prose.

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

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!

I'm sure scientists would point to specific brain chemicals, but I think love is actually a kind of magic. It's what allows things to happen, people to be creative, the world to change. Great things come out of love - for other people, for art, for beauty.

If you’re a writer, your first duty, a duty you owe to yourself and your readers, and to your writing itself, is to become wonderful. To become the best writer you can possibly be.