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I'm just trying to create characters and tell stories.

I like to create imaginary characters and events around a real historical situation. I want readers to feel: OK, this probably didn't happen, but it might have.

Creating characters is like throwing together ingredients for a recipe. I take characteristics I like and dislike in real people I know, or know of, and use them to embellish and define characters.

The stories I write are often literal to events that have happened or observations that I've made, and sometimes they're fantastical.

I'll write maybe one long paragraph describing the events, then a page or two breaking the events into chapters, and then reams of pages delving into my characters. After that, I'm ready to begin.

As a novelist, I have always been interested in how people come to terms with difficult, life-altering events.

I would never make up a character who didn't exist or an event that didn't transpire. If you're a real writer, you have other tools in your toolbox to build drama.

I like to take these unusual characters and then make them as normal as possible, because we all know that the tragedy and the abnormal always hides itself behind the normal.

I'm very conscious of trying to make something epic out of something small and ordinary.

Making sentences is what I do. I mean, the story will come as I write.