Yes, it’s true: I live in my head. Wherever my current story ideas take me. To Cuba or Nepal or California. With people who sing, or tend cows, or—sometimes—commit murder. And those places and those people are real. They may not even make it out of my head, but for the time they’re there? They are still very real.

My characters come to life as I write, not before. They shift and morph and often change the entire narrative arc of my stories. They become who they are in chapter five, or eight, or ten. So the name I started with generally just doesn’t fit the character as they emerge, as they talk with other characters, as they make choices, as they tell me where the book needs to go.