Fantasy is, of course, booming, and I think it's beginning to stretch its range as well.

All of this got me thinking about the history of the westward expansion, and got me to wondering how the exploration of the Solar System would be changed if there were an indigenous presence out there.

I think people enjoy a series. When you like a story, many readers want more of the same, which is dandy, if the author and the characters have more to say.

First and foremost, The Quiet Invasion is a first contact story. What would we do if we actually found evidence of alien life out there? It's also about politics.

I'm mostly a novelist these days, but I have written short stories in Fantasy, Science Fiction and horror.

Becoming a mother cannot help but change things. An author's life is reflected in their writing, whether they want it to be or not, and parenthood is one of the biggest life changes there is.

Now, Venus is an extremely hostile environment, and as such presents a lot of challenges for a science fiction author who wants to create life there. However, as I began to research it more thoroughly, I found myself intrigued by the possibilities the world offers.

Fantasy is, of course, booming, and I think it's beginning to stretch its range as well.

When I was in college, I spent a summer working in London. I'd enjoyed tea before that, but then I got actual, really good tea there and never looked back.

So, one of the things I was doing with the aliens in The Quiet Invasion was creating that advanced society which had ideas about morality and proper use of natural resources that were radically different from ours, as the Europeans were from the American Indians.

My joking answer to this question is that I leave a bowl of milk out on the back porch every night for the Idea Fairy. In the morning, the milk is gone and there's a brand-new shiny idea by the bowl.

The Lord of the Rings movie set an entirely new standard for fantasy in the movies.

I describe my plots as follows; A character is walking down the street when all of a sudden a piano falls on them. They spend the rest of the story digging out from under that piano. How they dig, how long and how well, this all depends entirely on the character.

Octavia Butler, of course, is brilliant and disturbing.

I did not want to write a story about the invasion of Earth, so I had to create a race capable of living nearby, which meant to either on the Moon, on Mars, or on Venus. I picked Venus.

Fortunately, many people also enjoy a stand-alone as a sample of something new, like trying the special at a favourite restaurant one night instead of going for the usual.

I have a better internal and intuitive understanding of folklore and myth than science and technology, so in that way fantasy is easier.

I myself was born in Sacramento, California in 1966.

Then, I realized that there is an indigenous presence in the Solar System. It's us. So, then, I got to wondering what would happen if a more technologically advanced society moved next door to us, the way we moved next door to the American Indians.

Actually, after while, finding the ideas is the easy part. Sorting them through and turning them into stories, now, that's the hard work.

When I'm not at the keyboard, I'm generally reading, practicing tai chi or middle eastern dance, or cooking.

I suppose if I was to have to pick a few, Ursula LeGuin would have to top the list. It was while reading her work that I decided I wanted to be an author.

If I get blocked, it is generally because I don't know enough about some aspect of the story or the characters. The answer for this is generally more research, or making more background notes, so the place and person can be more fully realized inside my own mind.

I graduated from the University of Michigan with a BA in Communications and left formal education behind.

Now, of course, the great thing about the solar system as a frontier is that there are no Indians, so you can have all the glory of the myth of the American westward expansion without any of the guilt.

I feel SF is going through an experimental phase right now.

I have to do more close research and fact checking for the science fiction. This is not however to say that writing good fantasy does not involve doing good research.

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

I don't write drafts. I write from the beginning to the end, and when it's finished, it's done.

Since the beginning, I always loved the game. When you grow up in Montreal, one day you want to be a professional hockey player. When I was six or seven, I knew that was what I wanted.

Before beginning, plan carefully.

Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end.

The people who voted for President Obama are just beginning to wake up to exactly what they brought in. The 'change' they envisioned is not the 'change' they have gotten.

Religion has caused more harm than any other idea since the beginning of time. There's nothing good I can say about it. People use it as a crutch.

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.

In the beginning it was all black and white.

A palindrome is a word or pattern that instead of developing in different directions it folds in on itself so that the beginning and end mirror each other, that they are the same.

Learning is the beginning of wealth. Learning is the beginning of health. Learning is the beginning of spirituality. Searching and learning is where the miracle process all begins.

At the beginning of 1955 only about 60 percent of American homes had TVs.

Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

Most musicians count at the beginning, and never count and talk to their musicians after that. They only talk to them at the end of the song. But I would count with them and talk.

What you really remember at the beginning was that you have to throw a budget together. We made some terrible mistakes at the beginning in my own budget that took us at least a year to catch up on.

There is a spirit and a need and a man at the beginning of every great human advance. Every one of these must be right for that particular moment of history, or nothing happens.

I am pleased to see that information campaigns, such as the America's WETLAND effort, are getting the message out, and people are beginning to realize that wetlands loss in Louisiana affects us all.

I started working on trying to sound like June from the very beginning.

The end comes when we no longer talk with ourselves. It is the end of genuine thinking and the beginning of the final loneliness.

Even though the future seems far away, it is actually beginning right now.

It is a curious sensation: the sort of pain that goes mercifully beyond our powers of feeling. When your heart is broken, your boats are burned: nothing matters any more. It is the end of happiness and the beginning of peace.

The American Revolution was a beginning, not a consummation.