"I think it’s an organic process. I don’t plot. I don’t plan. I start writing and characters and geography emerges. I find that in telling stories, the best laid plans go poof when your characters do what they want to do because you don’t control them—they become real and live their own lives. I certainly am influenced by the people I meet and the places I go to when I create my characters but it’s an intuitive thing, I just know who this person is or that person is and I know their name and I just know. And what I don’t know, he or she tells me."