Short stories are like individual jewel stones on a necklace, wonderful in themselves like standalone gleaming entities of semantic intensity.

Freedom is not a license to act but a license to exercise free choices in any given situation.

When tough times come, it is particularly important to offset them with much gentle softness. Be a pillow.

I was forgetting that an artist also just stares at a piece of paper or canvas all day. It somehow never occurred to me to connect these two diverse creative modes.

The only way to help your unique literary voice grow and eventually sing like a glorious creature of wonder is to write what you excites you into a creative passion and brings you pure unadulterated joy.

I was nurtured on Greek Mythology and the classical epics. I lived and breathed Homer. Other mythologies - the Russian, the Norse, the Persian, the Indian, Egyptian, etc. - all came later. First and foremost were the Greeks, and they were all living in my head as though I were Zeus and they were a clamoring Chorus of Athenas.

No waving of enchanted wands but heightened perception. No magic objects, but a transformed and enhanced reality. No spells or chants, but the raw power of the human will to enact supernatural change upon the universal fabric. This is the kind of "magic" that fills Lords of Rainbow - elemental, organic, humanistic - an extension of reality.