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I think I honestly invented my own genre, the historical spy novel.

I invented the historical spy novel.

I always liked spy stories.

I wrote speculative fiction because I loved to read it, and thought I could do better than some of the people who were getting published.

My first real writing job was at 'Rolling Stone,' so I wrote about rock-and-roll and politics and the like. At the time, I really didn't know what I wanted to write, and I did a bunch of investigative journalism.

While I was in high school, I discovered and began writing science fiction.

I never studied writing, but I'd always been a reader and had a secret fantasy about being a writer.

Writing fiction is the 'job' I try to keep at the center of things. The movie stuff has been a wonderful accident, though not entirely bizarre, either, as I have done some work in film before, and even directed a ridiculous, cable-access feature back in my 20s.

I had been writing fiction since I was in eighth grade, because I loved it.

I think I would have been a hopeless spy. I love telling stories and am almost entirely unable to keep a secret.