When I was a little kid back in Moscow, Russia, I've always thought I would become an artist or a folk dancer or an astronomer. In fact, if you'd asked me then about a life of solitary writing I would have said, "Oh how boring! Imagine, to sit at a desk all day and just write."

Our world is so bursting-full of natural wonder that we are all experiencing a sensory overload. We are no longer perceiving all of Ú the details, just the ones that immediately interest us.

A tornado of thought is unleashed after each new insight. This in turn results in an earthquake of assumptions. These are natural disasters that re-shape the spirit.

Of course at that point I had no idea that the adventure was only beginning and that the struggle and the rejections were to pile before me, a typical young writer, in an implacable mountain. But I was on my way.

However I will never forget what Marion [Zimmer Bradley] did for me by accepting that first story from a stupid enthusiastic kid.

If you ask me now, I think every single writer whose work I've read has had some influence upon me, and I continue to be influenced, subtly, by everything I read, like a sponge. But then, what writers aren't? Being a literary sponge is one of the prerequisites for this insanity.

Instructions are never included. They vary with the strength of your ability to see, the measure of your selective blindness, the limits of your mercy, and the intensity of your desire.