I wanted to connect a modern story with a myth that I had read.

Getting a job scared her but she was determined not to shy away from risk. That's what life's all about. Climbing out onto the airplane wing and jumping off.

I'm a very rooted person. I grew up in Norwich, Connecticut, I still live in Connecticut.

I grew up in a household of women, they ran the show, they kept it all together. I credit my ability to write in female voices, as well as male, with having grown up with older sisters in a neighborhood largely populated by girls.

Let me tell you something, my wife died for Tuesdays ago. Cancer of the colon. We were married forty-one years. Now you stop feeling sorry for yourself and lose some of that pork of yours. Pretty girl like you - you don't want to do this yourself.

So many bad things have happened to them that they can't trust the good things. They have to shove them away before someone can get it back.

Fiction writing is a strange business when you think about it. You sit down and weave a network of lies to explore deeper truths.