I had an idea for a story about a young woman who was living with people who were different, not just superficially different - such as hair colour, or eye colour, or skin colour - but different in some significant way.

From the beginning, the series has been story driven - I began with a story idea - but research feeds it.

And that's how I start myself. I usually go back a couple of pages, maybe to the beginning of the chapter, and I start reading. And as I'm reading, I'm tweaking - putting in a different word, changing the syntax, putting that clause over there, you know that sort of thing.

Life sometimes gets in the way of writing.

It took some time to gather the research and develop it into the storyline, and to finally finish an origin myth poem that I had been working on for twenty years.

I have been a reader of Science Fiction and Fantasy for a long time, since I was 11 or 12 I think, so I understand it and I'm not at all surprised that readers of the genre might enjoy my books.

Aside from sales, the letters from readers have been primarily positive.

I had an idea for a story about a young woman who was living with people who were different, not just superficially different - such as hair colour, or eye colour, or skin colour - but different in some significant way.

I probably read 100 times more than I write, but that way when I move my characters through it, I know.

Science Fiction is not just about the future of space ships travelling to other planets, it is fiction based on science and I am using science as my basis for my fiction, but it's the science of prehistory - palaeontology and archaeology - rather than astronomy or physics.

From the beginning, when I first got an idea for a story and wondered if I could write it, it has always been the story that has driven me.

I can move my characters through it easily, because I understand the background; I've really studied it.

I have heard Science Fiction and Fantasy referred to as the fiction of ideas, and I like that definition, but it's the mainstream public that chooses my books for the most part.

I don't write for publishers, certainly not for critics, and not for readers, But I am delighted that so many people have found my books enjoyable and want to continue to read them.

Of the two, I would think of my work as closer to Science Fiction than Fantasy.

No, my publisher has always done the marketing.

I can't tell you any more than any other writer can tell you why they write, and I don't know what my influences are.

My fiction is reviewed by the mainstream press, by science fiction periodicals, romance magazines, small press publications and various other journals, including some usually devoted to archaeological and other science material.

Though my books are written from a historical perspective, I have goon so far back that I am in the realm of prehistorical speculation rather than simple historical fact to weave my stories around.

I could write historical fiction, or science fiction, or a mystery but since I find it fascinating to research the clues of some little know period and develop a story based on that, I will probably continue to do it.

The idea led me into the research, which continues to give me more ideas for the story.

Each book has been different and has been challenging in its own way to write.

I'm just writing a story that I want to read.

I started writing to please myself, a story I would like to read, and that is still true.

I really fell in love with Africa.

I think of my books as mainstream and that's were most people who read them look for them in book stores.

With an eye made quiet by the power of harmony, and the deep power of joy, we see into the life of things.

Happiness is the harvest of a quiet eye.

It is reasonable to have perfection in our eye that we may always advance toward it, though we know it can never be reached.

To judge between good or bad, between successful and unsuccessful would take the eye of a God.

The plate at each point only sends back to the eye the simple colour imprinted. The other colours are destroyed by interference. The eye thus perceives at each point the constituent colour of the image.

One gets into a strange psychological, almost hypnotic, state of mind while on the firing line which probably prevents the mind's eye from observing and noticing things in a normal way.

Don't forget that the only two things people read in a story are the first and last sentences. Give them blood in the eye on the first one.

More firm and sure the hand of courage strikes, when it obeys the watchful eye of caution.

A cynic is a man who looks at the world with a monocle in his mind's eye.

The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me.

If your sister is in a tearing hurry to go out and cannot catch your eye, she's wearing your best sweater.

Baseball is a game where a curve is an optical illusion, a screwball can be a pitch or a person, stealing is legal and you can spit anywhere you like except in the umpire's eye or on the ball.

Only a kind person is able to judge another justly and to make allowances for his weaknesses. A kind eye, while recognizing defects, sees beyond them.

I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.

Nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose - a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.

I don't see any kind of mirror of power, male power, that is, as a form of liberation. I don't believe in an eye for an eye. I don't believe this is truly freedom.

Follow the wisdom of the great actor, James Cagney, you hit your mark, you look the other guy in the eye, and you tell the truth.

Thou has a thousand eyes and yet not one eye; Thou host a thousand forms and yet not one form.

Our situation here, without any exaggeration, is beyond description almost; it is such as eye has not seen nor ear heard, nor hath it ever entered into the heart of men to conceive Boston ever to arrive at.

Every day you must arise and say to your heart, I have suffered enough and now I must live because the light of the sun must not be wasted, it must not be lost without an eye to appreciate it.

Every age has a keyhole to which its eye is pasted.

It's easy to fool the eye but it's hard to fool the heart.

The eye is a very quick instrument, much quicker than the ear. The eye gets it immediately.