As a fiction writer, my favorite tools are my imagination and the peculiar opportunities offered by different points of view.

I like the idea of being a working writer, not of saying that it's going to take me 30 years to write my magnum opus.

I'm not sure the risks I take are any different from what other writers take, since we all serve at the pleasure of the reader.

I've always been a big reader.

If there is an audience out there for me, I want them to be surprised when the next book comes out.

Local teenagers killed in a car crash is a suburban legend, a stock plot line.

No one writes a great book every time out, or even a good book.

The story is always in service to the characters, and is only as long or short, or neat or ragged as it needs to be.

When I'm writing, I try to have the mask of my character on as I'm walking through the world.

You can't run from your roots.

Growing up in the '60s and early '70s, with the space flight and the Apollo program, I always loved planes. I always loved rockets and I always loved space travel.

I always squirm when I read what's called 'creative nonfiction,' and the writer is lobbing gobs of emotion and language at the world, hoping some of it will stick.

My main question that I ask of my characters is, 'What does it feel like to be you? And how do you get through the day? Where do you find the hope and faith to endure getting through the days, and what are your days like?'