I myself was born in Sacramento, California in 1966.

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.

Few humans see fairies or hear their music, but many find fairy rings of dark grass, scattered with toadstools, left by their dancing feet.

Beauty always promises, but never gives anything.

Freedom means you are unobstructed in living your life as you choose. Anything less is a form of slavery.

It must now atone in blood for its complicity in wickedness.

We're going to start making things again in America. As part of our plan to bring back our jobs, we're going to lower our business tax from 35 percent to 15 tax, the biggest since Ronald Reagan.

Being appointed Elder Professor meant very much taking over the shop, in that the professor in those days controlled all the moneys.

The tomato hides its griefs. Internal damage is hard to spot.

There is no system that is inherently moral if the participants themselves are not.

On the other hand, I was very much interested in the way people behaved, the human dance, how they seemed to move around each other. I wanted to play around with that.