Pen names have always fascinated me, in part because I understand the professional and economic and even societal reasons to do so.

Once readers and industry professionals have you pegged down as writing a particular type of book, they are less likely to try something new from you if they decided they didn't like the first one.

I think that there's this idea - especially for male readers, but female readers as well, because we're all indoctrinated, right? - where there's this idea that if a woman is tough, it can only be in a way that is still sexy.

Watching the progression and backlash against feminism even since 1970 will give you a serious case of whiplash.

This means I must pay close attention to the writing, but equally so to the scientific background - which sometimes means doing fairly involved calculations.

I went to the University of Washington as a physics and astronomy major. My other interest, of course, was aviation. I always wanted to be a pilot. And if you're going to fly airplanes, the best place to be is the Air Force.

In the male homosexual community, we love to label and categorize and organize each other as if we are in a never-ending high school biology class.

My first undertaking in the way of scientific experiment was in the field of economics and psychology.