I sat down and wrote a short story in two weeks and submitted it to Marion Zimmer Bradley. And Marion bought "Wound On The Moon" .My first sale and my first pro sale rolled into one.

A boomerang returns back to the person who throws it.

A choir is made up of many voices, including yours and mine. If one by one all go silent then all that will be left are the soloists. Don’t let a loud few determine the nature of the sound. It makes for poor harmony and diminishes the song.

I've always been creative verbally, had a flair, my teachers said - wrote great expository essays in elementary school, scribbled little poems, embraced all writing assignments. And all along I read voraciously - first in Russian and then, after we left the USSR, in English, and even Spanish.

Everything I write now might have roots in myths, often disguised,often dissolved into new multi-ethnic myths of my own making.

The nutcracker sits under the holiday tree, a guardian of childhood stories. Feed him walnuts and he will crack open a tale.

We don't need fantasy to mess with our minds to the point of rendering us insane - real life horrors do that already.