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" Once, my writing-avoidance behavior involved me mixing up a cleaning concoction and getting some ancient stains out of the carpet. My wife liked that one. "

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" I almost drowned in a hot tub at a writing workshop once after I had some drinks without accounting for how the high elevation would impact my tolerance. "

" I miss that thing I used to do when I first started out where I would just spontaneously generate ideas and try things and see where they'd go. "

" I know I felt like I was ready to be an adult long before the rest of the world agreed. I'd already realized that a lot of grown-ups didn't know any more than I did, and some of them were even dumber than I was, and even the ones who were smarter weren't using their smarts for things I necessarily considered worthwhile. "

" Stories are really important to people and can really change the way they understand, and even live, their lives. As such, I don't agree much with people who say, 'Calm down, it's just a story.' "

" As I got older, I had more experience with borders. Some literal - living in the dramatically blue misty mountains on the line between North Carolina and Tennessee, and living in California - home to expats, transplants, and refugees from both sides of innumerable borders. "

" Fictional realms are usually terrible places to vacation, as they tend to be full of monsters and conflicts - Narnia and Middle-earth would both be good places to get killed - but I wouldn't mind visiting the worlds of Iain M. Banks's 'Culture.' You'd just have a hard time getting me to leave. "

" I didn't grow up on any sort of border; more in the middle of nowhere, in rural eastern North Carolina. "

" I love drafting like I love eating ice cream or having sex; I love revising like I love doing logic puzzles; I love line-editing like I love perfectly organizing a bookshelf; I hate reviewing copyedits and the second round of proofreading because, by then, I'm getting pretty tired of my own words. They all have their own challenges, though. "

" When I was working on a Victorian-era novel, to get in the mood, I read several historical novels set in approximately the same period and place, and really enjoyed the detective novels of John Dickson Carr. "

" Family lore says I was named after the song 'Timothy' by The Buoys, a lovely little ditty about three guys who get trapped in a cave-in and resort to cannibalism; they eat Timothy. "

" It got to the point where most of my time went toward writing novels. I would still occasionally write short stories, but only when I was commissioned by an editor to write for a themed anthology or special issue. "

" I'm a competent novelist. I'm getting better. But I'm a really good short story writer. "