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With each book you write you have to learn how to write that book - so every time, you have to start all over again.

When you write the first book of a series, you do have to be careful what you put in because then you are stuck with it.

I've started lots of books, but it's hard for me to finish them.

I've been at writing long enough now to know that every three or four books, I have to start a new direction.

I think when you first start out, you're writing books that are about your immediate place.

In general, the main themes emerge early for each book, even before the storyline and characters, as I research the time and place I want to draw upon. Having said that, every single book so far has offered me surprises en route, and these include motifs that come forward as I am writing.

I think a conceptual idea comes to me first - something I've been mulling over a lot right before I feel like writing a book - and then the characters start to develop around it.

All the books I have written have been one book, from the beginning.