All my mystery novels have featured amateur detectives. The main reason for this is that I have always enjoyed mysteries with amateur sleuths, ever since I discovered Nancy Drew at the age of ten. I like the idea of an ordinary person stumbling into mysteries and then solving them. Critics often denigrate these books because they are deemed unrealistic. After all, how many ordinary people regularly encounter dead bodies? The answer is, ordinary people don’t, unless they are spectacularly unlucky or they are undertakers. They would soon come under suspicion from the police. Thus I will quickly confess that, in this regard, my amateur detective novels aren’t realistic. They aren’t meant to be, in that regard. They’re meant to entertain, and I hope that’s what they do. Readers have enjoyed books with amateur gumshoes for over a century now. Ever heard of Miss Jane Marple, for example? I happen to think that readers enjoy amateur sleuths because they are reading about people like themselves who don’t walk the mean streets of the city every day. I always enjoyed Nancy Drew and the other teen detectives because I could safely go adventuring in their shoes – though I certainly wouldn’t relish…

A friend of mine once had a date show up with a pillowcase. It contained his snake. No kidding. If that had been me, the relationship would have ended on the spot. Now, if he had shown up with his dog, that would have been a different matter entirely. There’s a matchmaking event going on in my new book, MISSION IMPAWSIBLE. The town of Wagtail caters to people and their fur friends, so they are encouraged to bring their pets with them. The cats and dogs will help break the ice and might even make some matches. Animals remove the pressure of coming up with something clever to say to a stranger. Even the shyest person is usually happy to talk about Fido, especially if Fido is present and wagging that tail. Think this is silly? Kloof, an app that connects people through their dogs, did a survey. Now before you peek at their survey results, guess which breeds are most likely to attract women to the guy holding the leash. German Shepherds or Poodles? Chihuahuas or French Bulldogs? Bernese Mountain Dogs or Labrador Retrievers? Shih Tzus or Golden Retrievers? Siberian Huskies or Pomeranians? Ready for the answers? In order…

There are endless choices to make when building a fantasy world. Landscape. Plants. Animals. Weather patterns. Clothes. Government. Religion. Sexuality. The shape of all these things are in the hands of the author, for the author is the god of the world they build. When I built Shiara and the city of Sagen sy Itagami, I wanted a world that would be extremely harsh in many ways—you do not want to be stuck on Shiara in the middle of the summer, for example. In a lot of ways, though, Shiara and Itagami are safer and more equal than the culture we’re used to. There are three sexes here—men, women, and ebets—and the only gender role that exists in the clan is procreation. From leadership to service, all roles are equally split between the sexes because I built a society where only magical power and skill with a weapon determine your rank. Writing this book allowed me to erase both the gender binary and the unequal distribution of between the sexes. It allowed me to change or erase a lot of other things, too. In Itagami, “normal” has an entirely different set of definitions and expectations than what we’re used to….