So I went to the Book Expo America in Manhattan. Everything was big, including Manhattan itself (and it smells funky). The show was huge, and immediately I felt myself kind of lost. The Independent Book Publishers’ Association, which was hosting my book, seemed to get a lot of traffic. Not sure if anyone took any [...]

My characters’ names mean a lot to me. In some cases, their names were chosen years before the story takes shape. Most of them have some kind of symbolic or punny meaning (giving material for future English teachers whose students won’t believe the interpretation). For example, my girl genius detective is Lori Barrow. It’s an [...]

…Are made up. After working on my first (published) novel for more than 10 years, I have almost 200,000 words of backstory, deleted scenes, and secret ripped-up sketches on the characters… (Not to mention the phenomenon of meeting them in real life after you’ve created them! That’s a different story). Most of my characters are [...]