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I believe the most important thing you can do in any kind of novel is to make your reader want to go on with it and want to know what happens next.

I'm writing another novel and I know what I'm going to do after, which may be something more like this again, maybe some strange mixture of fiction and non-fiction.

I always try to create conflict and drama in my books; it's the engine of the novel.

The play is a marvelous form, but it demands less than a novel.

A book becomes something else once it's dramatized.

Somehow, you can achieve a directness in the novel that you can't get anywhere else.

I just have to proceed as usual. No matter what happens, nothing helps with the writing of the next book.

Even if your novel occurs in an unfamiliar setting in which all the customs and surroundings will seem strange to your reader, it's still better to start with action. The reason for this is simple. If the reader wanted an explanation of milieu, he would read nonfiction. He doesn't want information. He wants a story.

If one book's done this well, you want to write another one that does just as well. There's that horror of the second novel that doesn't match up.

I look for two things when I am about to launch into a book. First, there has to be a dramatic arc to the story itself that will carry me, and the reader, from beginning to end. Second, the story has to weave through larger themes that can illuminate the world of the subject.