The illusion is that most of my work is simply about past events: a point in history and nothing else.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
History releases me from my own experience and jogs my fictional imagination.
Story and plot, not historical facts, are the engine of a novel, but I was committed to working through the grain of actual history and coming to something, an overall effect, which approximated truth.
I write about modern people who share a deep sense of connection to the mysteries of the past. I find that I understand myself and my world better when I'm able to peer into history as a mirror.
My past seems to be way more fascinating for people than my future, which bums me out.
My history writing was based on what I saw in strange, exotic places rather than just reading books.
I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is.
Time is something that interests me a whole lot - past and present, and how the past appears as people change.
I tend to like to read history - recent history, because I find that much more intriguing than just a writer's imagination.
It is clear that when you write a story that takes place in the past, you try to show what really happened in those times. But you are always moved by the suspicion that you are also showing something about our contemporary world.
My work is about my life as an event, and I find myself to be very temporal, transient.