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In writing a series of stories about the same characters, plan the whole series in advance in some detail, to avoid contradictions and inconsistencies.

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 would like to do a series about sequencing the human genome, and also analyze more human diversity among other ethnic groups - a 'Faces of America 2.'

Each book first begins with a little idea.

Having reached the halfway mark in the alphabet, my prime focus is on writing each new book as well as I can.

For myself, the only way I know how to make a book is to construct it like a collage: a bit of dialogue here, a scrap of narrative, an isolated description of a common object, an elaborate running metaphor which threads between the sequences and holds different narrative lines together.

Very often I'll find out at the end of a book what I put in at the beginning. A sort of process of elimination and discovery in one.

I always work from an outline, so I know all the of the broad events and some of the finer details before I begin writing the book.

Genome sequencing has changed taxonomy.

Creating a book and creating a collection involve a lot of editing.