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" I once took a workshop with Jim Shepard, and he has this term, 'rate-of-revelation,' that has come to mean a lot to me: 'the pace at which we're learning crucial emotional information about the stories' central figures.' An ever-increasing rate-of-revelation is good; a stagnant r-of-r is not. "

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" When I was in grad school, my husband and I used to house sit for a couple in Harvard Square, so we have these amazing memories of great Cambridge summers. "

Laura van den Berg

Great

House

Memories

" I think my favorite horror films are really grounded in human psychology, which is to say I think through sort of extreme dislocations of reality. "

" I love Javier Marias; I love his novel 'Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me.' "

Laura van den Berg

Battle

Think

" As a young writer, I was sort of sailing around trying to 'find my voice' - for lack of a better term - and I was really chafing against the very minimal brand of domestic realism that I'd read so much of in college. "

" We write in a culture that favors the heft of the novel. Better still if the novel in question is large enough to be wielded interchangeably as a doorstop and a weapon. "

" I'm such a first-person writer. "

Laura van den Berg

First-Person

Writer

" The kind of dystopian books that I've always loved the most are the ones where you find yourself in a world that's less scorched-earth and instead a world that has just been made different. "

" As we know all too well, our early years are formative in ways it can takes us a lifetime to grasp. Those years leave deep marks; in that way, the stakes of childhood are inherently very high. "

" I love many realists but very strongly resist the notion that realism presents a less stylized, more authentic version of the world. "

" It puzzles me when writers say they can't read fiction when they're writing fiction because they don't want to be influenced. I'm totally open to useful influence. I'm praying for it. "

" As for me, I was a lonely kid, with few close friends until I was an adult - even when I might have been perceived as being on the inside, I felt like I was on the outside, kind of like viewing the world through a sheet of glass. "

Laura van den Berg

Kid

World

" Florida is a very idiosyncratic place in a lot of ways - as are many parts of our fine country, but one could say Florida is particularly idiosyncratic. "

" We're all trying to figure out on a daily basis what kind of person to be, aren't we? I am, at least. "

" I'm pretty sure that I've never confessed in an interview my weakness for McDonald's Filet-O-Fish. The cheese is fake. Who knows what that 'fish' really is. It is gross. It is amazing. "

" Culturally, there is often the expectation that women should be repelled by anything too ugly, too violent. "

" As a teenager, I struggled a lot, had several major depressive episodes, and ended up dropping out of high school and getting a GED. "

" I love creating mysteries, but I am terrible at solving them. "

Laura van den Berg

I Am

Creating

" Florida is a most unusual place. It can feel at once stifling and like anything is possible there. "

Laura van den Berg

Anything Is Possible

Place

" A sense of play is important when I'm writing, and so messing around with, say, a magic routine can feel like play, at least initially. "

" 'Find Me' I think, is brooding in a very literal sense of the word in that you have all of these sort of interior storm that's growing within Joy over the course of the book and leading her to her moment. And certainly, I think there's an aspect of the supernatural. "

" I really need so much time to really make headway on a novel that requires me to disappear from the world in a way. "

" Unlike a novel, where you expect a different kind of arc that leaves us with a somber sense of resolution, I think a story in some ways as like a train window: being able to watch the landscape pass for a certain amount of time. And then your stop arrives, and you have to leave. "

" I tend to be drawn to characters who are not rule followers, who behave in unexpected and unusual ways. "

" In fiction, we are not bound by social convention, so the things that mystify and unsettle are allowed to rise to the surface. "

" Children tell themselves stories, engage in self-delusion and fantasy, but those narratives are more evolving than calcified - and with that malleability comes both freedom and danger. "

" I love noir, quite obviously. "

" Since childhood, I've been a fan of mysteries - 'Nancy Drew' lovers unite! - but 'Vertigo' struck me as an entirely new take on the genre. "

" Sometimes we talk about memory as though it's firm and fixed, but of course, memory is highly fluid and subjective and thus highly subject to manipulation. "

" I think that one thing about teaching is you're trying to communicate your thoughts about a work to a group of people who may or may not share that sentiment. This has forced me to become a lot more articulate about what I respond to and what I don't respond to in fiction. "

Laura van den Berg

You

Work

" I think we're often guilty of gravitating towards the familiar. Even if we recognize that certain patterns are unsatisfying and destructive, there can still be a comfort in the familiar recognition of a cycle repeating itself. "