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I was a political journalist; I came to writing novels through an interest in politics and power.

Now, I'm a failed political consultant. But sometimes fiction has a way of capturing people's imagination in a way that non-fiction doesn't. Conservatives typically haven't written much fiction - specifically political thrillers - over the years to educate, inspire and mobilize people on issues of great import, but we ought to.

I'm never sure who I'm writing for, or who's reading me, but I definitely see myself in conspiracy with my readers.

I think you can do a lot with fiction, and in some cases you can say even more in fiction than you can in straight-up documentary journalism.

To make it interesting and worth doing, writing a novel has to be a leap into the unknown. I have to be unsure if I can write it; otherwise, I won't want to.

I have no desire to write fiction. I did what I did, and it's done. There's more to life than writing and publishing fiction. There is another way entirely, amazed as I am to discover it at this late date.

I could write historical fiction, or science fiction, or a mystery but since I find it fascinating to research the clues of some little know period and develop a story based on that, I will probably continue to do it.

I think I write fiction for the opportunity to get beyond the limits of my own life.

There's always a bit of fiction in everything that I write.

I think you can do science fiction, but you have to ground it in some realism. People need to identify with the characters, with their plights and their issues.