When we work with history, to a very great degree we are all guessing. But by using motifs of time and history in a fantasy setting, we are acknowledging that this educated guesswork, invention, fantasy underlie our treatment of the past and its peoples - and we are not claiming a right to do with them as we will.

Even if we remember the past, odds are good we'll still repeat it.

I've spent my whole literary career blurring boundaries between genres and categories.

As many have noted, the peril for authors is that our work space is too easily our play space.

Part of what I want to do is sort of reclaim my story - it belongs to me and to my children, who have to live with whoever their mother is.

Bites are usually not random attacks by strays. The great majority of biting dogs belong to a family member or friend of the victim. When a young child is the victim, the attack almost always occurs in the family home, and the perpetrator is usually a 'good' dog that had not previously behaved in a menacing way.

Everybody has basically the same family, it's just reconfigured slightly differently from one to the next.

I've always put my family first and that's just the way it is.