I'm told my SF is of the hard variety and my Fantasy is romantic but hopefully all the characters are strong and the plots are lively.

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.

Instead of bracing yourself for the perils of the unknown, embrace the joy that is here, in your present moment.

The great William Shakespeare said, "What's in a name?" He also said, "Call me Billy one more time and I will stab you with this ink quill.

Are we not witnessing a strange tableau of survival whenever a bird alights on the head of a crocodile, bringing together the evolutionary offspring of Triassic and Jurassic?

A mortal person's mind is like a wilderness, with a tremendous volume of decaying constructs and half-understood experience forming natural harbors for wild animal effects.

It is easier to get one or a few of good sense, and of ability to legislate and adjudge, than to get many.

Beauty is that which excites the soul.

Public and employer opinion often defeat society's best interests with a prejudice against middle-aged women.

Academia is a graveyard of poets.

I love Twitter. It's like having a closet full of clever friends that you can visit twice a day, then shove back into the darkness when you're tired of them.

Our object in the construction of the state is the greatest happiness of the whole, and not that of any one class.