Actually, after while, finding the ideas is the easy part. Sorting them through and turning them into stories, now, that's the hard work.

When I'm not at the keyboard, I'm generally reading, practicing tai chi or middle eastern dance, or cooking.

First and foremost, The Quiet Invasion is a first contact story. What would we do if we actually found evidence of alien life out there? It's also about politics.

I have a better internal and intuitive understanding of folklore and myth than science and technology, so in that way fantasy is easier.

I have to do more close research and fact checking for the science fiction. This is not however to say that writing good fantasy does not involve doing good research.

My joking answer to this question is that I leave a bowl of milk out on the back porch every night for the Idea Fairy. In the morning, the milk is gone and there's a brand-new shiny idea by the bowl.

Becoming a mother cannot help but change things. An author's life is reflected in their writing, whether they want it to be or not, and parenthood is one of the biggest life changes there is.

I graduated from the University of Michigan with a BA in Communications and left formal education behind.

Fantasy is, of course, booming, and I think it's beginning to stretch its range as well.

Octavia Butler, of course, is brilliant and disturbing.

The Lord of the Rings movie set an entirely new standard for fantasy in the movies.

Your life on earth will be graded by the effect of the footprints you leave behind

I fell in love, not deep, but I fell several times and then fell out.

People need to climb the mountain not simple because it is there But because the soulful divinity needs to be mated with the spirit.

Death is the opening-and the closing-of a Door.

Let old ones go. Dont be a memory-monger! Once you were young──now you are even younger.

Foolish is my happiness, and foolish things will it speak: it is still too young—so have patience with it!

An agent once told me that if I would lose my English accent, I would never stop working in America.

A man who tells secrets or stories must think of who is hearing or reading, for a story has as many versions as it has readers.

There's no question that the main location of al Qaeda is in tribal areas of Pakistan.

Let me not follow in the clamor of the world, but walk calmly in my path.