What I do not want to write is didactic political tracts.

What does immortality mean to me? That we all want more time; and we want it to be quality time.

Here was a fragment of Goddess myth that, through all its permutations, had somehow escaped being turned on its head. It was the perfect springboard for the sort of novel I wanted to write.

I was thinking about what I wanted to write next, after my first novel, and had decided that I wanted to write a story with a lot of strong female characters in it.

Beyond that, I seem to be compelled to write science fiction, rather than fantasy or mysteries or some other genre more likely to climb onto bestseller lists even though I enjoy reading a wide variety of literature, both fiction and nonfiction.

The mers were also designed to reproduce only at long intervals, in order to maintain the natural balance of the environment in which they were placed.