As far as the writing goes, I started telling stories as soon as I could talk, and started writing them down as soon as I could string words together.

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.

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

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.

What’s wealth but the means of expanding one’s life? There’s two ways one can do it: either by producing more or by producing it faster.

Be Yourself. An original is worth more than a copy

Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you're a man, you take it.

Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth.

If some of these [Republican] folks were around when Columbus set sail, they must have been founding members of the 'flat earth society.' They would not believe that the world was round.

Thank God for the reality for which we were created, a moment-by-moment communication with God himself.

Love is God and God is love, no one's below and no one's above.

There's a difference between silence meaning agreement and being silenced.

Take something you really don't think about: Plastics in the ocean. I mean plastics in the ocean have an enormous ecological effect.

It's not about your greatness as an architect, but your compassion