I'm only happy when it rainsI like soured relationships as much as meet cutes. In real life, romance without much conflict is happier, but in novels, romance needs tension. There's got to be something keeping the two lovebirds from their happily ever...

Under the influence of literatureI was working on a scene in KM11 the other day where Kit and Aaliyah are doing some sleuthing and I realized that, despite my desire to write a heist novel, this was turning into a buddy cop novel. Well they're not co...

Why do people join cults?I have a morbid fascination with cults. While starting one always seemed like too much work (and I have zero interest in screwing teenage virgins) close encounters with cults and cult-like organizations make them seem like da...

The steep part of the novelThe reason Felix Liber exists is that I wanted to write a heist novel, and I needed a character who could introduce Kit to the kind of people who could and would fund a heist. "I'll introduce this character in book ten," I...

No one wants to see your character peeThe advice "show, don't tell" is such commonly well-known advice that even people who have never written a story know it. What it means is, basically, if your character gets in a shipwreck, don't cut to them wash...

Supernaturals come in different colorsI started watching the tv adaptation of The Sandman, the Neil Gaiman comic. It was one of the first comics I ever started collecting, back when Neil Gaiman was this unknown author whose main claim to fame was co-...

Are humans ever the spirit animals for other animals?I saw a TikTok the other day where a polar bear approached some humans for help after it got a can stuck on its tongue. Apparently it hadn't been able to eat for a few days. The people eventually s...

Body for lease?I wrote Parasitic Souls as a stand-alone novel based around the idea of a world in which magic is just the newest technology. Younger people embrace it, and older people don't really understand it, but everyone recognizes it as the hot...

I may in fact be a hobbitTravel is only really enjoyable if you know you can come back. If I'd found a wardrobe or a clock when I was Lucy Pevensie's age, I would have gone through to Narnia without a second thought. I mean, especially if there was s...

Cultivating Useful EnemiesCapitalism is a very useful enemy. In Parasitic Souls, the bad guys aren't shoving parasitic souls into unwilling host bodies out of malice or psycopathy; they just want to make some money. History is littered with the enorm...